PalmOS to be Renamed GarnetOS

Access Company, current owners of the Palm OS, have announced Palm OS 6 will be renamed GarnetOS as part of a rebranding effort.

The current owners of the Palm OS, Access Company, have announced a new branding campaign to replace its “Palm Powered” slogan and logo with a new one: “Access Powered.” As part of the effort, the Palm OS operating system will be renamed GarnetOS.

Although Garnet has been the codename for versions of the Palm OS used in a variety of devices (including shipping Treo smartphones), the name change is the latest convolution in the saga of the Palm brand and the once market-leading Palm OS. Just last month, Palm bought itself a perpetual license for the Palm OS and announced it will take over much of the operating systems’ development; the purchase was ironic since Access bought PalmSource, which had been spun off from PalmOne back in 2003.

“Access and PalmSource continue to move forward as it becomes one fully integrated company,” said Tomihisa Kamada, ACCESS co-founder and CTO, in a statement. “The new Access Powered logo that encompasses Access product offerings, and renaming Palm OS to Garnet OS are two more milestones in our evolution as a leading provider of a range of technologies, solutions, platforms and products specifically designed for the mobile phone and converged device markets.”

The name change certainly won’t be any benefit to Palm or Palm products, since it will generate customer confusion. Access could be attempting to separate itself from its Palm origins as quickly and completely as it can, first by tossing development of the Palm OS back to Palm, then by removing any vestige of the Palm name from its own products in place of “Access Powered.”