The Palm Brand is Making a Return Next Year, According to TCL
Back in the day, Palm pioneered the concept of personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, largely considered the predecessor to smartphones. They’ve entered this market back in 1996 and achieved success with devices like the Palm TX and the Palm Pilot. With the Palm Pre, in 2009, they attempted to take on the rising Android and iOS platforms with their webOS alternative. And while webOS was a compelling platform (which even took rising designer Matias Duarte as their UX head), it failed to actually gain traction in the market. Fast-forward to 2010, and the company was bought by Hewlett-Packard for $1.2 billion, only to be sold again to TCL a mere 5 years later in 2015 (with webOS rights being sold to LG in 2013).
However, it’s not all bad news for Palm fans. TCL, who also makes Alcatel and BlackBerry-brandeddevices, has announced that they are going to bring back the Palm brand starting in 2018. In a statement to Dutch website Android Planet, TCL’s marketing manager Stefan Streit announced that new Palm-branded products are going to be announced in early 2018. Mr. Streit did not go into detail over what kind of products would be announced, but he said that smartphones were included in the possibilities. It’s highly unlikely that those products will keep using webOS because of existing competition, and instead they will likely go for Android as their OS of choice.
According to Mr. Streit, Palm will be the fourth brand the company will maintain, right next to TCL, Alcatel and BlackBerry. Each brand is aimed at a target audience. While Alcatel focuses on millennials/young people and BlackBerry focuses on the business market, Palm will be aimed at an older audience looking for the latest in technology. He also said that they’ve been researching the products that best fit the brand during the past few years. While the brand has been almost completely forgotten by now, we’re still excited to see a legend come back to life. We’re looking forward to the first half of 2018 to see what Palm has to offer.
Source: Android Planet
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