Palm, Inc.
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| Palm, Inc. | |
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: PALM) |
|---|---|
| Founded | United States (1992) |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California, United States |
| Key people | Ed Colligan, President and CEO |
| Industry | Computer hardware and software |
| Products | Z22, Tungsten E2, TX, Treo 650, Treo 700p, Treo 680, Treo 700x, Treo 700wx, Treo 750 |
| Revenue | US$1.57 billion  (FY2006) |
| Operating income | US$105.3 million (FY2006) |
| Net income | US$336.2 million (FY2006) |
| Employees | 1,103 (Nov 2006) |
| Website | palm.com |
Palm, Inc. is a personal digital assistant manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California that is responsible for popular products such as the Zire, Tungsten PDAs, Treo smartphones and the LifeDrive. Previous product lines include the Palm Pilot, Palm III, Palm V and Palm VII. While most of their devices run Palm OS, a recent edition of the Treo runs Windows Mobile.
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[edit] History
Palm Computing, Inc. was founded in 1992 by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, later co-inventors of the Palm Pilot. Ed Colligan later joined the team. The company was started to create a PDA for consumers, called the Zoomer. The devices were manufactured by Casio and marketed by Tandy, while Palm provided the PIM software. The Zoomer failed commercially, but Palm managed to survive through selling synchronization software for HP devices, and the Graffiti handwriting recognition software for the Apple Newton MessagePad.
The company was acquired by U.S. Robotics Corp. in 1995. In June 1997, Palm became a subsidiary of 3Com when U.S. Robotics was acquired by 3Com. In June 1998 the founders became unhappy at the direction in which 3Com was taking the company, they left and founded Handspring. 3Com made the Palm subsidiary an independent, publicly traded company on March 2, 2000, and it was traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol PALM.
In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS[1], which was named PalmSource in February[2]. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company.
In August 2003, the hardware division of the company merged with Handspring, was renamed to palmOne, Inc. and traded under the ticker symbol PLMO. The Palm trademark was held by a jointly-owned holding company.
In April 2005 palmOne purchased PalmSource's share in the 'Palm' trademark for US$30 million [1]. In July 2005, palmOne launched its new name and brand reverting to Palm, Inc. and trading under the ticker symbol PALM once again.
On January 4, 2006 Palm released the Palm Treo 700w, the first Windows Mobile-powered Treo in a partnership with Verizon and Microsoft.
In December 2006, Palm, Inc. paid $44 million to ACCESS for the rights to the source code for Palm OS Garnet. With this arrangement, a single company is again developing palm hardware and software. Palm can modify the licensed software as needed and it need not pay royalties to ACCESS over future years.
[edit] List of PDA models
[edit] Current models
- Z22
- Tungsten E2
- TX
- Treo 650
- Treo 700w (CDMA, Windows Mobile)
- Treo 700wx (CDMA, Windows Mobile)
- Treo 700p (CDMA, Palm OS)
- Treo 750v (GSM, Windows Mobile, Vodafone Branded)
- Treo 750 (GSM, Windows Mobile)
- Treo 680 (GSM, Palm OS)
[edit] Discontinued models
The following PDAs are no longer in production.
| Discontinued Model | Replacement model |
| Pilot 1000 | Zire 31 |
| Pilot 5000 | Zire 31 |
| PalmPilot Personal | Zire 31 |
| PalmPilot Professional | Zire 31 |
| Palm III | Zire 31 |
| Palm IIIe | Zire 31 |
| Palm IIIx | Zire 31 |
| Palm IIIxe | Zire 31 |
| Palm IIIc | Zire 31 |
| Handspring Visor | Zire 31 |
| Palm V | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm Vx | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm VII | Treo 700p |
| Palm VIIx | Treo 700p |
| Palm m100 | Zire 31 |
| Palm m105 | Zire 31 |
| Palm m125 | Zire 31 |
| Palm m130 | Zire 31 |
| Palm m500 | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm m505 | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm m515 | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm i705 | Treo 700p |
| Tungsten E | Tungsten E2 |
| Tungsten T | Palm TX |
| Tungsten T2 | Palm TX |
| Tungsten T3 | Palm TX |
| Tungsten T5 | Palm TX |
| Tungsten W | Treo 700p |
| Zire | Z22 |
| Zire 21 | Z22 |
| Zire 71 | Zire 72 |
| Handspring Treo 90 | Treo 700p |
| Handspring Treo 180 | Treo 700p |
| Handspring Treo 180g | Treo 700p |
| Handspring Treo 270 | Treo 700p |
| Handspring Treo 300 | Treo 700p |
| Treo 600 | Treo 650/700p |
| Treo 650 (CDMA only) | Treo 700p |
| Treo 650 (GSM only) | Treo 680 |
| LifeDrive Mobile Manager | Palm TX |
[edit] See also
- PalmSource, Inc.
- Palm Desktop
- Palm OS
- Handspring
- Graffiti (Palm OS)
- List of Palm OS Devices
- Personal digital assistant
