Palm is staging a comeback and America’s largest wireless provider, Verizon, will lend a helping hand. Back in August 2017, TCL (Palm’s parent organisation) Marketing Manager Stefan Streit had revealed that new Palm devices would be announced in early 2018. Now citing a “trusted source”, Android Police reports that TCL will launch a Palm-branded smartphone on Verizon later this year.
There’s very little details available about the phone at the moment. The phone is expected to run the Android OS. Palm’s long time partner, Verizon will once again be selling the device. The carrier has been a selling partner of Palm since its webOS handsets.
Palm specialized in the manufacture of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The company was an early pioneer in the smartphone space, bringing to market the Treo line of handsets years before Apple and Google got into the business. However, after the acquisition by HP in 2010, the company went into a downward spiral. HP eventually sold the Palm name to Chinese electronics maker TCL in 2015, and since then it’s been growing back slowly. The company officially announced its revival last year and finally we’re about to see a Palm smartphone this year.
But there remains a big question, would a Palm-branded phone succeed today? Definitely it’s not a straight forward question and can’t be answered with a Yes or No. It depends on a lot of factors. As early smartphones are becoming old enough that we’re actually starting to feel nostalgia for them. But does nostalgia translate into sales? Well, some may buy the phone just for the sake of its name ‘Palm’, or perhaps for some retro features today’s phone don’t offer. But for the phone to survive in the current market, a few truly groundbreaking features are a must. Innovation is increasingly rare among mobile devices these days and TCL needs to capitalize on it.
No exact release date or details about the phone is available yet, but if something comes our way, we’ll for sure bring it to you.
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