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2004–2009 · Mobile

PalmSource and the Linux Palm OS that never quite arrived

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

In 2004 the maker of Palm OS promised to rebuild it on Linux for phones. Ownership changes, few devices and the iPhone overtook the plan, and Palm went its own way with webOS.

Palm splits in two

Palm defined the handheld organiser with the PalmPilot in 1996, and Palm OS was licensed to Handspring, Sony and others. In 2003 the company split into palmOne, which made devices such as the Treo smartphone, and PalmSource, which developed and licensed the operating system.

PalmSource’s big project was Palm OS 6, known as Cobalt, a modern multitasking rewrite. It was delivered to licensees in 2003 and 2004, but no manufacturer shipped a product with it.

The Linux promise

In December 2004 PalmSource announced that it would buy China MobileSoft, a Chinese mobile Linux developer, and put Palm OS on top of a Linux kernel. The aim was to offer phone makers a familiar Palm interface and thousands of existing applications on a free, widely supported base. The first Linux-based Palm phones were promised for the following years.

In 2005 the Japanese mobile browser company ACCESS agreed to buy PalmSource. It turned the Linux plan into the ACCESS Linux Platform, announced in 2006, which could also run older Palm applications.

Overtaken

The ACCESS Linux Platform reached very few phones. Meanwhile palmOne, renamed Palm again, kept using the old Palm OS and began selling Treos running Windows Mobile from 2006. The arrival of the iPhone in 2007 and Android in 2008 changed what buyers expected from a smartphone.

Palm’s answer was webOS, a new Linux-based system built in-house and unveiled with the Palm Pre in January 2009. It was well reviewed but did not sell in large numbers. HP bought Palm in 2010 and stopped making webOS devices the next year. webOS later found a home in LG televisions.

Legacy

Linux did become the base of the world’s most widely used phone operating system, but it was Google’s Android, not Palm OS. The story is a reminder of how quickly the phone software market consolidated once the iPhone arrived.

Sources

  • Wikipedia: Palm OS
  • PalmSource, announcement of the China MobileSoft acquisition, December 2004
  • ACCESS Co., announcement of the ACCESS Linux Platform, 2006

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