Analysts asked by Wired believe Palm’s new OS, Nova, and handsets based on it will make their premiere at the Consumer Electronics Show, January in Las Vegas.
As previously reported here on TeleRead, Palm has not been doing so well in the competition for smartphone market share. The Treo Pro, which Palm boosters had hoped would hold onto users until they could bring out Nova, has not sold well (perhaps because it was sold unlocked without any cellphone service provider subsidies, unlike competing smartphones).
Now Palm is in much the same position against Apple that Sony was in the portable-audio-player market fight. Both Palm and Sony more or less created their respective markets (with the Pilot and the Walkman), but both have ended up allowing Apple to steal a march on them with their iPods. Nova could be Palm’s last chance to stay in the smartphone market at all.
It will be nice if Nova allows Palm to make a comeback, but I am not holding my breath. There are so many competing operating systems for smartphones already that it is hard to imagine yet another new one being able to unseat the most popular ones from their thrones.
