Modernization
For several years, PalmSource had been attempting to create a modern successor for Palm OS 5 and have licensees implement it. Although PalmSource shipped Palm OS Cobalt 6.0 to licensees in January 2004, none adopted it for release devices. PalmSource made major improvements to Palm OS Cobalt with the release of Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 in September 2004 to please licensees, but even the new version did not lead to production devices.
In December 2004, PalmSource announced a new OS strategy. With the acquisition of the mobile phone software company China Mobilesoft, PalmSource planned to port Palm OS on top of a Linux kernel, while still offering both Palm OS Garnet and Palm OS Cobalt. This strategy was revised in June 2005, when still no device with Palm OS Cobalt was announced. PalmSource announced it was halting all development efforts on any product not directly related to its future Linux based platform.
With the acquisition of PalmSource by ACCESS, Palm OS for Linux was changed to become the ACCESS Linux Platform which was first announced in February 2006. The initial versions of the platform and software development kits for the ACCESS Linux Platform were officially released in February 2007. As of January 2011, the ACCESS Linux Platform has yet to ship on devices, however development kits exists and public demonstrations have been showcased.
Palm, Inc. the main licensee of Palm OS Garnet did not license ACCESS Linux Platform for their own devices. Instead, Palm developed another Linux-based operating system called Palm webOS. On February 11, 2009, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said there would be no additional Palm OS devices (excepting the Centro being released to other carriers). Palm is focusing on Palm webOS and Windows Mobile devices. On April 1, 2009, Palm announced the availability of a Palm OS emulator for its webOS.
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