PalmSource announced Thursday at the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, that South Korean consumer-electronics maker Samsung will be the first phone maker to use the latest version of the Palm operating system.
PalmSource announced Thursday at the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, that South Korean consumer-electronics maker Samsung will be the first phone maker to use the latest version of the Palm operating system.
Samsung's Mobile Information Terminal SGH-i500 will run on Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile networks and use version 5 of the Palm OS. Samsung has risen to one of the top positions in the handset market, using a strategy of developing advanced handsets for mobile phones.
The SGH-i500 has a clamshell design with a 16-bit colour liquid crystal display and a built-in digital camera. The device comes with an ARM-compliant processor and a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) 2.0 browser.
A Samsung representative said the device will be released in Europe this year. A CDMA version of the phone, called SPH-i500, will be launched in the United States in the second quarter. Pricing of the device has not been determined, the representative said.
Samsung is licensing many of the major operating systems for smart phones, including Microsoft's Smartphone 2002 OS, the Symbian OS and the Palm OS. The company is covering all the bases in case one of the operating systems grabs the lead in the market.
Operating systems from Symbian, PalmSource and Microsoft combine the functions of a mobile phone and a personal digital assistant. The resulting "smart phones" are beginning to trickle into the world's wireless market.
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