Remember Palm smartphones? They may return in 2015

By Andy Boxall Published January 6, 2015

Could the Palm name make another comeback in 2015? According to the recent appearance of a mysterious website, followed on Tuesday by news from TCL/Alcatel – the company behind mobile brand Alcatel OneTouch – it certainly looks that way.

Updated on 01-06-2015 by Trevor Mogg: Added in official announcement from Alcatel confirming Palm relaunch

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Our first inkling that something was afoot was when the mynewpalm site suddenly appeared on the web last week showing the familiar Palm circular logo with the words “coming soon,” and “smart move,” underneath. The site is registered to a company named Wide Progress Global Limited, which apparently purchased the right to use the Palm brand from Hewlett Packard recently. One of the names attached is Nicholas Zibell, who is also Alcatel OneTouch’s president of operations in America.

Confirmation

On Tuesday, Alcatel issued a statement confirming its plan to “create a new Palm Inc.” in the form of a Silicon Valley-based company that will “take ownership of the Palm brand.”

Details on precisely what’s in store are currently scant, though the company says it’s intending to “rebuild the brand involving Palm’s very own community, making it the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry.”

According to its statement, Alcatel’s ambitions are lofty to say the least, as it’s promising to go “far beyond” offering an “advanced device.” In fact, it says it’s planning to deliver “absolute breakthrough innovations” in a number of areas, including technology, design, and user experience – a tantalizing prospect, to say the least.

Alcatel OneTouch, which concentrates on Android-based smartphones and tablets, says the timeline of what it’s calling “the Palm project” will be released at a later date.

While the company has released a few smartphones internationally, it has never made a huge impact, and isn’t as well known outside of Asia as ZTE, Huawei, or even Xiaomi. Palm’s certainly better known in the U.S., but it has had a rocky recent history, and hasn’t been associated with awesome hardware for some time.

But now that Alcatel has confirmed its intention to relaunch the Palm brand – confirmation that’s been accompanied by some rather bold promises – we’re certainly looking forward to learning more about what the company’s knocking together in the workshop.

Article originally published on 12-31-2014

Former Senior Mobile Writer

Andy has written about mobile technology for almost a decade. From 2G to 5G and smartphone to smartwatch, Andy knows tech.

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