As reported previously in Teleread, Chinese consumer electronics company TCL is resurrecting the Palm identity, which it acquired from HP, via its own Alcatel OneTouch smartphone brand. TCL has now issued an official press release (in occasionally quaint Chinglish) which gives more details on its plans for Palm, and the resources it proposes to throw at the project.

TCL also claims to be taking a fairly unique approach to the Palm revival. “Palm has always carried a lot of affect and emotions,” it declares. “That’s why TCL has set the direction to rebuild the brand involving Palm’s very own community, making it the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry. The objective goes far beyond proposing a more advanced device. It is to deliver absolute breakthrough innovations in Technology, Design, User Experience, Eco-system, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Business Models.”

That probably goes a long way towards explaining the slightly weird headline “TCL Communication co-(re)creates Palm.” TCL also talks of using “the various assets of TCL Communication” including a “best in class R&D organization, rich with 5000 engineers across 7 R&D centers around the globe,” commensurate with “the 5th largest global handsets vendor” under the Alcatel OneTouch brand.

“Palm brand has always been synonymous with innovation throughout its history,” adds TCL. “As such it has consistently acted as a pioneer of mobile technologies. Now is the time to revive and bring back this pioneer spirit.”

The release is still short on detail of what exactly TCL proposes to do to deliver on that statement, however. It does state “that it will create a new Palm Inc., a US-based company that will take ownership of the Palm brand. New Palm Inc. will remain a truly Californian, Silicon Valley, based company leveraging on the talents and partnerships of the area.” Does this mean, though, that the new Palm will take up the abandoned WebOS project that HP inherited? Does it mean that the new Palm will dig even deeper into Palm’s history and look at its original user interfaces? All this talk of tapping the community does imply that TCL seeks to enlist enthusiasts for some of those legacy technologies, but at this point it’s still too early to tell. Watch this (palm-sized) space …

 

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