PalmSource

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PalmSource, Inc. is the software development company which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system. PalmSource used to be a part of Palm Inc, and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Access Co..

The Palm OS runs on 38 million devices that have been sold since 1996 from hardware manufacturers including Palm, Inc., Samsung, Lenovo, Aceeca, AlphaSmart, Fossil, Inc., Garmin, Group Sense PDA (Xplore), Kyocera, PiTech, Sony and Symbol. PalmSource also develops several programs for the Palm OS, and as of December 2005, PalmGear claims to offer 28,769 software titles of varying genres. Palm OS software programs can also be downloaded from CNET, PalmSource, Handango, and Tucows.

PalmSource also owns BeOS, which it purchased from Be Inc. in 2001.

History

In August 2003 Palm, Inc. was split, and both PalmSource and palmOne, Inc. became independent divisions.

On December 8 2004, PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft, a software company with a mobile Linux offering. As a result, PalmSource has announced that they are going to extend Palm OS to run on top of the Linux architecture.

In April 2005, palmOne purchased PalmSource's share of the Palm trademark and in July 2005 subsequently renamed itself Palm, Inc.[palmOne purchases PalmSource share of the Palm trademark] As part of the agreement, palmOne granted PalmSource certain rights to Palm trademarks to PalmSource and licensees for a four-year transition period.

In September 2005, Japanese company Access Co., Ltd., which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, including NetFront, acquired PalmSource for $324m[Access Co. Ltd acquire PalmSource for $324m]. ACCESS completed the acquisition on November 14, 2005[ACCESS Completes Acquisition of PalmSource]. PalmSource is no longer a separate publicly traded company.

References

External links

[PalmSource's website]

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