Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on ...

initially developed by

Palm, Inc. Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 6 ...

, for

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...

s (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

-based

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...

. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for

personal information management Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use information items such as documents (paper-based and digital), web pages, and email mes ...

. Later versions of the OS have been extended to support

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s. Several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS. Following Palm's purchase of the Palm trademark, the currently licensed version from

ACCESS Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access Healthcare, an Indian BPO se ...

was renamed ''Garnet OS''. In 2007, ACCESS introduced the successor to Garnet OS, called

Access Linux Platform The Access Linux Platform (ALP) is a discontinued open-source software based operating system, once referred to as a "next-generation version of the Palm OS," for mobile devices developed and marketed by Access Co., of Tokyo, Japan. The platform ...

; additionally, in 2009, the main licensee of Palm OS, Palm, Inc., switched from Palm OS to

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...

for their forthcoming devices.

Creator and ownership

Palm OS was originally developed under the direction of Jeff Hawkins at Palm Computing, Inc. Palm was later acquired by U.S. Robotics Corp., which in turn was later bought by

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...

, which made the Palm subsidiary an independent publicly traded company on March 2, 2000. In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, which was named

PalmSource ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (formerly PalmSource) is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS. PalmSource was spun off from Palm Computing, Inc. P ...

. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company on October 28, 2003. Palm (then called palmOne) became a regular

licensee A licensee can mean the holder of a license or, in U.S. tort law, a licensee is a person who is on the property of another, despite the fact that the property is not open to the general public, because the owner of the property has allowed the li ...

of Palm OS, no longer in control of the operating system. In September 2005, PalmSource announced that it was being acquired by

. In December 2006, Palm gained perpetual rights to the Palm OS source code from ACCESS. With this Palm can modify the licensed operating system as needed without paying further royalties to ACCESS. Together with the May 2005 acquisition of full rights to the ''Palm'' brand name, only Palm can publish releases of the operating system under the name 'Palm OS'. As a consequence, on January 25, 2007, ACCESS announced a name change to their current Palm OS operating system, now titled ''Garnet OS''.

OS overview

Palm OS was a

proprietary {{Short pages monitor