ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (formerly PalmSource) is a subsidiary of

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 ...

which develops the

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is pro ...

PDA

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

and its successor, the

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 ...

, as well as BeOS. PalmSource was spun off from Palm Computing, Inc. Palm OS runs on 38 million devices that have been sold since 1996 from hardware manufacturers including Palm, Inc.,

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

, IBM, Aceeca,

AlphaSmart AlphaSmart, Inc. was an education technology company founded by Apple Computer engineers Joe Barrus and Ketan Kothari, and Kothari's brother, Manish, in the early 90's. At the time of their initial release in 1993, the first AlphaSmart models were ...

, Fossil, Inc.,

Garmin Garmin Ltd. (shortened to Garmin, stylized as GARMIN, and formerly known as ProNav) is an American, Swiss-domiciled multinational technology company founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao in Lenexa, Kansas, United States, with headquarte ...

Group Sense PDA Group Sense PDA Limited (GSPDA) is a Chinese manufacturer of personal digital assistants and smartphones. GSPDA is owned by Group Sense and is based in Hong Kong. One of its product lines is the Xplore series of personal digital assistants. It w ...

(Xplore),

Kyocera is a Japanese multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power generating systems, telecommunic ...

, PiTech,

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

, and Symbol. PalmSource also develops several programs for the Palm OS, and as of December 2005, PalmGear claims to offer 28,769 software titles of varying genres. Palm OS software programs can also be downloaded from CNET, PalmSource,

Handango Handango was an online store selling mobile apps for personal digital assistants and smartphones headquartered in Irving, Texas. History Handango InHand was founded in 1999 by Randy Eisenman. It is an app store for finding, installing, and b ...

, and

Tucows Tucows Inc. is an American-Canadian publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States. The company is composed of three independent busines ...

. PalmSource also owns BeOS, which it purchased from Be Inc. in August 2001.

History

In January 2002, Palm, Inc. set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, which was named PalmSource in February. In October 2003, PalmSource was spun off from Palm as an independent company, and Palm renamed itself

palmOne 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 60 ...

. palmOne and PalmSource set up a holding company that owned the Palm trademark. In January 2004, PalmSource announced the successor to classic Palm OS called Palm OS Cobalt. However, it failed to gain support from hardware licensees. That December, PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft, a software company with a mobile

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

offering. As a result, PalmSource announced that they would extend Palm OS to run on top of the

Linux architecture The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

. In May 2005, palmOne purchased PalmSource's share of the Palm trademark for US$30 million and two months later renamed itself Palm, Inc. As part of the agreement, palmOne granted certain rights to Palm trademarks to PalmSource and licensees for a four-year transition period. Later that year, ACCESS, which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, including NetFront, acquired PalmSource for US$324 million. In October 2006, PalmSource announced that it would rename itself to ACCESS, to match its parent company's name.Ed Hardy
PalmSource Changing Its Name
Brighthand, October 12, 2006.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

PalmSource Historical SEC Filings
Electronics companies of the United States Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Palm, Inc.

History

See also

References

External links