After a somewhat successful takeover of BlackBerry devices, TCL Corporation is planning on releasing Palm-branded devices next year:
TCL actually bought the Palm name back in 2014, four years after HP acquired the brand and then shuttered its products a year later after they underperformed. That seemed a tragic end for Palm, which had led the late 90s and 2000s consumer device market with its PDAs and early smartphones, like the Pilot and Pre, respectively. But it looks like TCL is going to introduce an undisclosed number of devices under the Palm name early next year.
That's all we really know, thanks to an interview the company's marketing manager Stefan Streit gave to Android Planet1. While he wouldn't divulge what kind of devices would be included, he did tease that smartphones could be a possibility. The only other thing he revealed was Palm's intended place in TCL's portfolio. Rather than try to spice up the brand for new consumers, Streit mentioned that the new Palm devices would be geared toward users familiar with the old ones that ruled the gadget world before the new millennium. Whether that impacts their design or just how they'll be marketed is unclear.
It will be interesting to see if they make anything of it, or if it will just be a rebranded handset like the DTEK line. Perhaps they will ship with StyleTap or something similar for all you PalmOS needs.
[1]: Dutch
(Score: 3, Informative) by forkazoo on Friday September 01 2017, @01:21AM
Sadly, after so many years of neglect, there's no obvious reason for BeOS to make a comeback. It's a shame, in some ways it was very forward looking and ahead of its time. After years of sitting on a shelf, everything else can certainly do what it did. The things that made it special, aren't. If it had been in the level of active development of NeXT or Linux, it'd certainly still be a viable platform. Now it's just sort of a time capsule of what could have come out of the 1990's but didn't.