Palm will no longer be developing new phones running on Windows Mobile software, the company stated as part of its quarterly earnings announcement.
Instead, all its smart phones going forward will run on the WebOS that was first developed for the Palm Pre and lately for the Pixi.
The news came on the back of disappointing quarterly results: Palm’s losses for the first quarter were US$164.5m in comparison with US$41.9m for the same period last year.
Despite losses, Palm’s adjusted sales were better than expected at US$360.7m as it shipped 823,000 smart phones over the quarter, which made for a 134pc increase on the previous quarter.
However, year-on-year there is a 30pc decrease in smart phones sold, indicating that the uptake of the Palm Pre, while good, is not balancing out the drop in sales of its older product lines.
Despite Palm planning to drop Windows Mobile, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement: “Palm has been and remains a great partner to Microsoft, and they are one of the many companies we work with to deliver a compelling range of mobile offerings.”
While Palm will no longer be developing handsets for the platform it is working closely with Microsoft products, working on improved Exchange security amongst others things, according to Jon Rubinstein, chairman and CEO of Palm.
By Marie Boran, via Gadgetrepublic.com
