The Engadget Guide to How Palm Became Palm Again
posted Jul 14th 2005 12:15PM
Dammit, we knew that getting the palmOne logo tattooed on our asses was going to be a huge mistake:
palmOne officially changed its name (back) to Palm, Inc.
today, capping thirteen years of name changes, acquisitions, spinoffs, splinterings, and mergers for the Palm
brand. Since you can hardly be expected to keep track of all the twists and turns of the saga that is Palm, we've
thrown together this little timeline of events that should hopefully help you keep track of who is who now.
1992 - Palm Computing founded by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky.
1993 - Palm Computing's software turns up on the Zoomer, a $700 handheld made by Casio and sold at
Radio Shack that didn't do so well, which is why you've probably never heard of it.
1995 - Palm Computing is acquired by U.S. Robotics.
March 1996
- Palm Computing introduces its first successful handheld, the Pilot 1000, which (originally) sports a whopping 128KB of RAM. The Pilot 5000 (pictured at right) follows soon after.
May 1997 - 3Com buys U.S. Robotics, discovers that they’ve also purchased Palm Computing.
September 1997 - Pilot Pen sues Palm Computing over the use of the name “Pilot” in its
products.
December 1997 - Palm Computing decides to start licensing the Palm OS to other manufacturers. IBM’s
WorkPad becomes the first manufacturer besides Palm to introduce a Palm-powered handheld.
March 1998 - 3Com/Palm Computing sue Microsoft for its proposed use of the name “PalmPC”. Settlement allows
Microsoft to use the term “Palm-sized PC”. They eventually go with “Pocket PC”.
June 1998 - Here’s
where it starts to get hairy: Dissatisfied with the new direction 3Com has taken Palm, original founders Jeff Hawkins
and Donna Dubinsky, along with Ed Colligan, leave to launch Handspring.
September 1998 - Palm licenses the Palm OS to Handspring.
June 1999 - Qualcomm introduces the pdQ (pictured at right), the first Palm-powered cellphone. It
disappears pretty damn quick.
September 1999 - 3Com announces that they’re spinning Palm Computing off into its own separate
company.
September 14, 1999 - Handspring introduces its first handheld, the Handspring Visor Solo.
Novemeber 1999 - Sony announces that it has licensed the Palm OS.
March 2000 - Palm Computing goes public as Palm, Inc.
August 2000 - Sony introduces its first Palm-powered handheld, the Clie.
June 2001 - Palm, Inc. creates a new subsidiary for its hardware business called Palm
Solutions.
July 2001 - Palm, Inc. announces plans to create a subsidiary for the Palm OS.
October 2001 - Handspring introduces the Treo 180 (pictured at right), its first smartphone.
March 2002 - Palm, Inc. announces that their new OS subsidiary will be known as PalmSource (Trivia:
PalmSource was originally the name of the Palm OS developers conference).
August 2002 - Just like how old people start sleeping in separate beds, PalmSource and Palm Solutions
move to separate campuses.
October 2002 - Palm, Inc. introduces the Tungsten T, their first Palm running on Palm OS 5.
October 2002 - Sony invests $20 million in PalmSource.
June 2003 - Palm,
Inc. announces plans to acquire Handspring, the company founded by the original founders of Palm, and spin off
PalmSource as a separate company which will develop the Palm operating system.
August 2003 - Palm, Inc. announces that after spinning off PalmSource and acquiring Handspring, the
newly combined company will be known as palmOne.
October 2003 - Palm, Inc. shareholders formally vote to spin off PalmSource and acquire
Handspring.
May 2004 - Sony announces that it will no longer sell Palm OS-based handhelds outside of Japan.
December 2004 - PalmSource acquires China MobileSoft and begins porting the Palm OS to Linux.
May 2005 - palmOne drops $26.7
million to acquire sole rights to the Palm brand name from PalmSource.
July 14th, 2005 - The circle of life is completed when palmOne officially becomes Palm, Inc.
again.
is that orange thing the new logo? ugh, not a fan.
Great history lesson ;)
Keep up similiar stuff, its good :D
wow, great article!
let's not forget this very enlightening news article:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2002/11/handspring.html
Now I'm just waiting for all the products to be updated so when I buy a Tungsten T5, it doesn't say Pa1mOne on it.
after reading that, the word palm has lost all meaning.
great timeline! good job
So, what will PalmSource go by now?
You forgot to add something about the new tower going up at the Palm in Las Vegas.
Do people even use Palm devices nowadays?
I think the celebration calls for a new product: The UX-50!!!
Seriously Sony put so much effort into the Cli?and finished with the UX-50. While not sounding good on paper (a laptop-centric PDA) it was excellent in the flesh and powerful too, beating out a lot of PocketPC stuff that's out now. So buy the designs already!
#4, Ditto... keep saying it over and over and it has lost all meaning...
#6, Have you ever heard of a little handheld call the Treo? oooooh yeah... that thing :-P
Timmay
Hey now that iv'e seen it so much, isnt palm a funny looking word u guys???
I'm getting a headache reading all this. Someone has a flowchat. Maybe that'll be easier to follow.
#11:
that's exactly what i was thinking, i'm like pal-m, that doesnt look spelled right. i encounter that all the time nowadays though, if you stare at a word long enough it starts to looked spelled funny.
Brado, that wasnt the last Sony PDA...
It was the TH55.
That was not a laptop-centric PDA, and in fact, both had relatively slow processors.
That new logo looks like crap. The old logo was perfect!
alex, trust me, I got a huge headache just trying to stay on top of all the twists and turns of this saga.
Zoomer ?!?! Heard of it ?!? Heck, I have one, and after all these years it still works.
It runs GEOS and can be played with quite a bit.
And as an extra bonus I can show off Palm's original logo. (betcha can't guess what it was)
Why isn't Palm's purchase and subsequent waste of BeOS in there?
Why isn't Palm's purchase and subsequent waste of BeOS in there?
Funny, when you go to www.palm.com, the title of the Web Page (in my browser's title bar) is
"Welcome to palmOne, formerly Palm, Inc."
But then the text of the page says "... find information about Palm, Inc. (formerly palmOne, Inc.)"
I think they're confused.
God, the new logo sucks. I say they should keep the old one, it still looks awesome to me.
To #15: I should've used "laptop form factor" instead of "laptop-centric". And I wouldn't call it slow. It was average in all things but multimedia, where it's comparatively low Mhz chip can still beat my o2 in movies say.
#17, er #18, whoever you are... It's not worth mentioning the BeOS because, as far as anyone can tell, they've done *nothing* with it. I do vaguely recall something about Zeta licensing it from Palm to further the work on their product.
Guys, the Sony Clie PEG-NX-90 was the last Sony Clie PDA, but thanks for playing.
'scuze me the NZ90 my bad.
Dear Palm,
Less buyouts and logo changes...more TREOS!!!
And the death spiral continues........
Its going to be interesting to see if Palm acquired or simply left to do a full
frontal face plant into a bush of cactus that is Windows Mobile. The only
possible hope they have at this point is that the Treo can hold them until they
can release something Linuxy. If Treo sales tank before they get their next REAL
OS upgrade out.....thank you for playing how to run a business into the ground.
Please deposit 50 million in cash assets to play again.
"I think they're confused."
No, just retarded. Any company that goes through CEOs like a freaking CEO of the month club sure as hell ain't doing anything right.
*sits back with a bag of pop corn and watches the continuing death throws of Palm*
Kinda like the T-1000 being throw in that molten metal. Palm doesn't have a freaking clue what its doing.
Ooooo wonder what the next buyout is going to be? Maybe some small time flash storage manufacturer?
.. so I bought a Palm Tungsten C about a year ago in Vegas. To my disappointment, the WIFI and the touch screen had many glitches. It was impossible to work with. My complaints to Palm went unanswered. After a while I got the generic response, from one of their templates, telling me to "soft reset if the problem persists". But wait, there's more.
One day I was very excited to discover that Palm has released an official patch for the tungsten C! I quickly downloaded and installed it, making sure I follow their instructions to the letter.
Ever since the update, WIFI no longer works AT ALL. Whenever you try to connect it spouts something about bad MAC ID. Naturally, this kinda makes the whole thing unusable.
I've emailed and called Palm about this numerous times. After a $%#*load of red tape, they've acknowledged the update *MAY* cause wifi to stop working, and asked me to installed another one, which ofcourse didn't help.
Now, I *know* they have the original firmware, and I *know* they've got tools to reflash the device, but they keep saying that I will have to send the device over, on my expense ofcourse, to have it fixed.
Sorry for the long rant, but this has been one of the WORST customer service experiences ever. It's like talking to robots. You can't get much more corporate than Palm. Not to mention the fact that it seems no one over there ever heard of QA. An *official* patch that screws up the most important feature. MEH!
Buyer beware!
Why do companies always think that a new logo is gonna fix their issues. I've been with 3 companies that have tried that and it usually indicates their grasping at straws. Damn Branding people get the ear of the CEO next thing ya know you have the same crappy products with a new colored logo and everyone has to watch a powerpoint presentation on how it's gonna turn things around.
However, I should state that they do seem to be getting back on track with the release of the Treo 650 and LifeDrive, but they've got to catch back up on the marketshare that PPC OS devices has taken while they were napping.
"...while napping".
Yeah right, they were at full steam. Don't be confused.
PALMONE CEO's LIST TO DO:
#1 Change company name.
#2 Split stock.
#3 Apply at Microsoft.
Handspring Visor-->Palm 515-->T/T-->T2-->T3--->
Dell Axim X50V.
Palm lost their way.
Enough said.
I wish that they ask sony to put their OS in sony ericsson p910a or ask aony to put thier OS in any sony phone.I think it's would be nice b/c in the future many like to have all in one device
Don't forget, $26million to buy the name back, don't forget all the marketing and rebranding stuff is at least another several hundred K worth of work. WTF mate, is what i would say to Palm... hmmmm
I hope Palm will release a new product with tons of killer application for people wo use mobile computing technology.
Is there an email address to complain to these wasters? I've just spent £300 on a totally naff and useless Palm E2 handheld that was pushed into the weeds by one costing less than £200! And can I find an email address to complain? Do I go public, or do I have to write snail mail to the CEO?
MB