Is Palm Going to be Resurrected As an Alcatel OneTouch Brand?
Palm is a name which hasn’t been heard much since it was bought by HP (and then strangled following the death of the Touchpad) but it looks like it might be making a comeback of some kind.
WebOS Nation notices on Friday that www.Palm.com, the old home of Palm, now redirects to MyNewPalm.com.
It’s not clear who owns the website domain (it leads to an offshore shell company out of the British Virgin Islands), but it looks like that offshore shell company, or possibly one with a very similar name, also owns a bunch of other Palm related trademarks (the TMs were transferred from HP in October).
I’m not sure what this means, but one webOS fanblog has turned up a surprising connection to a Chinese smartphone maker. According to MakaPalm, the Chinese tech company that owns the Alcatel OneTouch brand might be about to resurrect the Palm brand:
TCL Communication may be the company behind the new webpage that has been teasing loyal fans of the mobile-computing pioneer Palm.
“Smart move”—a slogan that appears in a looped video on mynewpalm.com along with the orange Palm logo—is the brand platform of Alcatel One Touch, TCL Communication’s mobile brand.
The name of TCL Communication’s senior vice president Nicolas Zibell also appears on a document formalizing the transfer of Palm trademarks from HP to another company in October.
I would bet he’s right.
There have been absolutely no rumors on this topic, so it is hard to guess what Alcatel, or actually its parent company TCL, will do with the Palm brand. But I would tend to agree with Mike Cane’s speculation that we’re probably going to see an Android smartphone bearing the Palm logo.
It might even make an appearance next month at CES 2015, so I would keep your eyes peeled. I plan to stop by the Alcatel booth and ask about it. (I also sent an email, but I’m not sure my press contact info is still valid.)
TCL Alcatel makes some cheap but decent smartphones and tablets under the Alcatel brand, and a commenter told me that they’re also a leading tv maker (thanks, jjj!). I have one of the smartphones, and it’s not good as Palm used to make but it’s not bad. It’s not great, but I got it because it was cheap and I’m mostly satisfied.
Assuming you set realistic expectations, the new Palm phones will probably be about as satisfactory.
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