True and the migration of the Palm OS GUI to a Linux kernal has been muted for over a year now so it's a fair question to wonder how much of this is shareholderware (to improve stock prices) and how much is reality?
It's interesting that it's not being called Palm OS.
There continue to be parallels with Apple Computer who themselves very nearly lost the plot during their own "wilderness" years between Mac OS 9 (and ugly grey PC style boxes) and Mac OS X (and rediscovery of industrial design).
Years passed, share price dropped and sales eroded while they ummed and arghed about a proper multi-tasking operating system to replace the pretty but dated OS 9 that Windows had almost caught up with. It's rumoured that John Sculley (who took the CEO crown from Steve Jobs) even considered licencing a version of Windows. In between a succession of CEOs they realised they couldn't build it in-house and looked outside almost scooping up BE OS but then grabbing Steve Jobs NeXT before it disappeared into oblivion in order to obtain it's multi-tasking OS which was based on a BSD Unix kernal. Then after grafting a new, improved Mac like GUI on top Mac OS X was born to wide applause.
Share prices rose, sales increased and Steve Jobs was reinstated on the throne
Of course, there were a few other things that made improved Apple's fortunes such as doing a deal with Microsoft to ensure vital applications like Office were available, sorting out the industrial design and killing the Mac clone business where 3rd party hardware manufacturers could licence the Mac OS. Developers also found that it was reasonably straight-forward to version Unix software onto the Mac, so high-end software products that were running on Sun or Silicon Graphics found their way onto the Mac.
Apple still only has a small % of the overall PC market but a good slice as a single manufacturer.
So I'm wondering whether Access / PalmSource will learn anything from the Apple model. It would seem from the press release that they are positioning the new OS as one that will be licenced by device manufacturers in the same way that Windows Mobile and Symbian is. I always thought it was a strange move when Palm originally split themselves in two so that one half could licence it's crown jewels for 3rd party device makers to compete with the other half. It was even stranger when Palm eventually sold the whole thing off to Access when hardware profit margins are getting smaller all the time. I doubt Palm Inc will reacquire their OS to give themselves competitive advantage over other device providers and will thus continue to compete on their industrial design afterall they now support Windows Mobile for the Treo 700w in the U.S.
I'd say then that the key for the success of this new OS will be developer support and ensuring that important applications are available from day one. Love or loath Flash, it's going to be an important requirement for mobile device operating systems, at least for the near-future.
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