Chinese TCL intends to return to the market gadgets under the legendary, but half-forgotten now brand Palm in early 2018. What kind of gadgets we'll see under the brand Palm, while remains a secret.
The legend returns Chinese company TCL, which owns trademarks of Alcatel and BlackBerry for mobile devices and the Philips brand on TVs, announced plans to return to the gadget market of the legendary Palm brand in 2018.. This was reported by Stefan Streit, head of the marketing department of TCL in an interview with the Dutch Internet portal Android Planet.
According to the representative of TCL, the company intends to introduce new products under the Palm brand at the very beginning of 2018.. In his interview, Stefan Straight did not specify which types of mobile gadgets will be represented under the brand name, but did not rule out the possibility that they would be smartphones.
It is unlikely that the new Palm gadgets will work under its previously owned mobile operating platform webOS due to tight competition in today's mobile market, note in Android Planet, is much more realistic scenario using the Android OS.
According to Stefan Strejt, Palm will become the fourth brand of the company in the mobile devices market, after TCL, Alcatel and BlackBerry. Each brand, he said, will have its own target audience. While Alcatel's gadgets will focus on millennials and youth, and BlackBerry on the business segment, the new products under the Palm brand will be aimed at a more senior audience interested in the latest technologies.
In an interview, Stefan Straight also noted that in TCL for several years, carefully studied the group of mobile devices that most correspond to the brand Palm. Despite the fact that the Palm trademark today can be considered almost completely forgotten, in TCL still "hope for the revival of the legend".
What Palm Company is famous for Palm is one of the pioneers of the market of so-called PDAs (compact personal computers), or "personal assistants" (personal digital assistant, PDA) - predecessors of smartphones.
PDA was a portable device with a large screen, but, as a rule, almost without the means of communication. Only the late PDA models were supported by Wi-Fi, but they also died out under the onslaught of smartphones.
The company Palm achieved a deafening market success in 1996. with the release of the successful Palm TX model, and then the Palm Pilot. Today, the Palm Pilot is considered the very first commercially successful PDA model in their entire history.
Palm is also the author of the world's first multi-tasking smartphone operating system called WebOS.
In the year 2009. Palm has made an attempt to resist the growing onslaught of smartphones running Android and iOS with the release of its own alternative in the form of Palm Pre running webOS. Despite all the advantages of webOS, at that time it was never able to break through and become commercially successful.
In 2010 year. Palm was absorbed by Hewlett Packard for $ 1.2 billion. HP tried to bring to the market several different smartphones and tablets running WebOS, but none of them succeeded, so in a year's time, sales of devices with the legacy of Palm had to be rolled up due to poor sales volumes.
How the brand Palm went to TCL and what became of him TCL began negotiations with HP on the purchase of the Palm brand in 2014. By that time, HP had already managed to get rid of the webOS platform, reselling it to South Korean LG in 2013.
Now LG uses webOS, mainly in Smart-TVs and other consumer devices.
After the final acquisition from Hewlett-Packard of the rights to the Palm trademark in 2015. , until today from the company TCL almost no signals were received about the plans for using this brand. Instead Palm, the Chinese manufacturer has focused on a more "lacquered" acquisition, the brand BlackBerry, whose fame has not yet covered with dust.
However, the advancement of the BlackBerry has so far not been marked by notable successes.