Everything old is new again as Chinese company TCL has announced that it is reviving the Palm brand as a US based subsidiary. Not only that it will once again make smartphones, and the company is soliciting opinions from the existing Palm community on what the next device should look like.
TCL currently makes Alcatel smartphones, after entering into a partnership with French telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent. Whether it intends to expand Palm beyond the US is unknown, as future plans are rather sketchy. All that is known is that it will stay true to the US-born roots of Palm by basing the company in Silicon Valley to take advantage of the talent pool there.
One thing to note is that the large pool of patents previously owned by Palm has been sold off piece meal when the company went under. This may leave any new devices looking and feeling very different from the traditional Palm style; whether that is a bad thing is debatable. However, TCL will be supporting the development of the new Palm devices with the rest of its resources that include 5,000 engineers across seven R&D centres.
To be fair, the current batch of Alcatel smartphones are not too bad; and the quality of the devices should point to an acceptable level of finishing from anything coming out of the new Palm Inc.
[Source: PR Newswire, Engadget]
