PalmSource focusing 100% on Linux-based smartphone OS

We already mumbled something yesterday about how
PalmSource was having a rough year, but apparently the company is going for broke and pouring 100% of their efforts into developing Linux-based versions of the Palm OS
for smartphones. Earlier this week Interim CEO Patrick McVeigh revealed that they're, "delaying all development of products not directly related to this," and that they expect to roll out a version of their Linux-based smartphone OS
for low-end phones by summer of 2006, with a 2nd version for high-end handsets to follow sometime later in the year.
Ok, we get that the smartphones (and not children) are the future and all that, but what we're still trying to figure out is how palmOne (which is soon to become just "Palm"
again) fits into this. They've already been notorioiusly cagey about switching over to
Cobalt, the next version of the Palm operating system (pictured at right), but let's face it, they can't stick with Palm OS 5 forever, can they? This announcement means that Cobalt is more or less dead (halting development on an OS that isn't even out yet is hardly an encouraging sign), so if palmOne/Palm decides it can't wait as long as a year and a half for PalmSource to bust out their new high-end OS for smartphones that could very well them leave with little choice but to switch over to Windows Mobile.

[Via Palm Addict]