As 2007 nears its end, speculation about the upcoming developments of the Android platform - and, more importantly perhaps, which OEMs and developers will adopt the OS for their hardware - grows. In a podcast discussing Palm’s next-quarter roadmap, J. Edward Rutkowski and Tadd Rosenfeld (of msmobiles.com and mytreo.net respectively) put forward the case for the somewhat ailing smartphone company to add a gPhone to their line-up. Given the recent news that the low-end Palm Centro is outselling company expectations, especially compared to the higher-end (and less consumer-focused) Treo series, the unsurprising fact that Palm’s profit margin on the handset is relatively low would be a reasonable incentive to adopt open-source Android. It’s not a new suggestion; Ryan Block called for Palm to make connections with Google shortly after the Android announcement. However according to the company’s roadmap they’re still on course for their own, Linux-based Palm OS sometime in 2009, having suffered extensive delays earlier this year (around the time that they cancelled the Foleo smartphone companion), and are looking to OEM providers (with Open Handset Alliance member HTC pegged as favourite) to develop new WM-based handsets.
“Palm has always been committed to open platforms for developers. And Palm has the added differentiation of being able to tightly integrate the software platform with our hardware design, which we believe gives us an advantage in delivering a great user experience. Palm customers have benefited from the availability of Google services on Palm’s platform, such as Google Maps for mobile on Palm OS. And we look forward to further collaboration with Google to offer great user experiences on Palm products”
Priorities for Palm are straightforward: continue spending on Centro marketing (which has opened new avenues as a Sidekick competitor) and meanwhile pump their seriously reduced finances into the Palm OS II platform. Many interpreted the company’s response to Block’s editorial (reprinted above) to be a dismissal of Android; however the vaguely-worded response leaves plenty of room for Palm to adopt the underlying OS source and garnish it with the tightly-integrated top layer UI that the company is known for. With profit margins slipping and new competitors entering the fray all the time, it would seem only to make sense to adopt a strategy that could cut the dangerously long 18-month delay until their new OS reaches the market.
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