Palm to Ship OS 5 PDA in October

Palm will have its first product using the new version of the Palm operating system, Palm OS 5, on the market October 28, according to the chief executive officer of Palm's hardware division, the Palm Solutions Group.

Palm OS 5, which will be the first software from Palm to run on processors based on a high-speed core from ARM, will allow software developers to tap into the mobile phone market. It will also offer faster clock speeds and enhanced security for handheld users.

"Our first ARM-based OS 5 products will be hitting the market in the fall, beginning October 28. But it is a horse race to see if we have the first product out or if it's Sony," Todd Bradley, CEO of Palm Solutions Group, said Thursday. Sony is a Palm licensee.

Bradley declined to offer details about the product.

Another for ARM

Many devices in the mobile phone market--as well as the Pocket PC from Microsoft--already run on the ARM chip. Palm announced OS 5 earlier this year and in February began demonstrating the OS running on ARM chips from Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments.

"Licensees received the code for OS 5 in May. There has been an enormous amount of work around application migration, and we've put lots of new features into the devices. Things like ARM, networking applications, Bluetooth cards, a display screen with 320 by 320 pixels, enabling the products to be part of personal-area networks and attachments over and above [Palm's handwriting-recognition software] Graffiti," Bradley said.

Palm has promised that its OS 5 will feature an enhanced user interface that will in turn bring increased personalization, security, multimedia, and wireless networking, as well as compatibility with existing Palm OS software programs.

Though Palm will attempt to whet consumer's appetites for products using Palm OS 5 with a few products before the end of the year, the major push behind Palm OS 5 will come in 2003 when a variety of products will be released, Bradley said.