Palm, the smartphone manufacturer that Hewlett-Packard acquired in 2010 before subsequently shelving its mobile device aspirations, has been thrown another lifeline by Chinese consumer electronics company TCL, which says it plans to revive the brand through "the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry."
TCL, which lays claim to being the 5th largest mobile handset vendor in the world selling Android devices under the Alcatel Onetouch and TCL brands, announced at CES that it has purchased the Palm trademark and intellectual properties and will create a new Palm Inc. to be based in Silicon Valley.
It says it plans to rebuild the Palm brand by taking on board advice from the Palm community, which could be good news for those smartphone users hankering for the days of a physical keypad in an age now dominated by onscreen virtual ones.
TCL hasn't yet revealed details of its plans for the Palm name, but it's doubtful any future Palm smartphones will be powered by WebOS, the Linux kernel-based OS developed by Palm that was sold by HP to LG in 2013 and is now used in the Korean company's smart TVs.
Source: TCL