TCL acquires Palm, intends to crowdsource the brand’s comeback
It’s official. Palm has a new home. On Tuesday, TCL Communication Technology Holdings Limited announced that it is the proud new owner of the PDA giant of old, confirming last week’s rumor that the brand could be coming back under Chinese ownership. TCL said it will create a new subsidiary, Palm Inc., which will operate as a U.S.-based company with its home in Silicon Valley.
“Palm brand has always been synonymous with innovation throughout its history,” the company said in a press release. “As such it has consistently acted as a pioneer of mobile technologies. Now is the time to revive and bring back this pioneer spirit.”
TCL, which already sells a range of mobile devices worldwide under the Alcatel OneTouch brand, intends to revive the Palm brand by crowdsourcing input form Palm’s very own fan base.
“We want to attract the people who have ideas on how to revive the brand in a meaningful way,” said George Guo, TCL CEO. “It was once a very strong brand and there are many fans of this brand around the world, including people at TCL.”
TCL acquired the Palm brand from Hewlett-Packard, who in turn bought it in 2010 intending to use its WebOS mobile operating system to compete in the smartphone space. HP later abandoned the effort to compete with its own mobile operating system and sold WebOS to LG Corp. in 2013. LG now uses WebOS in its range of smart TVs.
With WebOS not part of the package, it’s uncertain what OS new Palm devices are likely to run. TCLs current range of smartphones runs a mix of Android, Windows Phone and Firefox OS, so any of these could be likely candidates.
To support whatever new embodiment Palm’s fan base comes up with for the new device –or devices –TCL will commit the full capacity of its R&D department and manufacturing capabilities to the project.
“The objective goes far beyond proposing a more advanced device,” the company said. “It is to deliver absolute breakthrough innovations in Technology, Design, User Experience, Eco-system, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Business Models.”
TCL has not disclosed the terms of the acquisition and said that details of the timeline of the roll-out of the Palm project will be communicated at a later date.
photo credit: Howdy, I’m H. Michael Karshis via photopin cc
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