Palm Nova - new operating system from Palm

Already on January 8, 2009 at CES, Palm promises to show the long-awaited new operating system, code-named Palm Nova, which has been rumored for a long time. They say the Nova functionality will surprise everyone: there will be such features that "no one has ever seen before" (these are the words of one of the Apple developers who have now moved to Palm). According to some reports, there will even be some rudiments of an intelligent interface. For example, your smartphone will independently download from the Internet the weather forecast for the dates and places that are indicated in your calendar for business trips.

Perhaps Nova is the last hope of the stagnant company Palm to keep up with the outgoing locomotive of the smartphone market, dominated by the iPhone and Blackberry. Things are getting worse for Palm. The latest version of Palm OS is Palm OS 5 released six years ago. The appearance of Palm OS 6 was expected three years ago, but this did not happen. The Nova software platform is based on the Linux kernel and will be significantly different from all previous versions of the Palm OS.

Simultaneously with the operating system on January 8, a line of new Palm models based on it will be announced. They will be positioned as a cross between Blackberry (smartphones for work) and iPhone (smartphones for everyday use). Entry into the market of all this is planned for mid-2009. At best, in 2009 they will see three or four new Palm models.

A well-known manager, John Rubinstein (former Apple senior vice president for hardware development) was invited to run this new project, and the project is funded by a group of investors led by former Apple financial director Fred Anderson . Together with them a number of talented engineers who left Apple work. In total, the company has hired 150 new developers, most of whom are working on this project.