Nope, Alcatel Isn't Doing Anything With Palm

BARCELONA—The dream of Palm's revival isn't expressionless, but it'southward certainly very dozy.

Concluding twelvemonth at CES, Chinese electronics company TCL (owner of phone maker Alcatel) purchased the severely distressed Palm brand, one of the most storied and meaningful brands in mobile engineering science.

MWC Bug Art At the time, TCL CEO George Guo told a cute story near hiring a California-based team to create a "collaborative environment where user input drives the direction of the company," edifice on the tremendous faith Palm and WebOS users had during the dark days when the brand was endemic by HP.

But since so—crickets. Palm.com still redirects to mynewpalm.com, which has the aforementioned "Coming Shortly" message it did a year ago.

Now, alas, "at the present time we practise not accept any plans we tin can talk over," Alcatel marketing VP Jon Maron told us. Alcatel, meanwhile, is consolidating its mobile devices under its own one-word brand, getting rid of the OneTouch moniker that it has added on for the by few years.

While Palm technically belongs to TCL the parent visitor, and not to Alcatel, Maron described Palm as a "tool in our toolbox" that wasn't necessarily being practical to a projection however.

Both Palm and Alcatel show a strength that TCL has over competing Chinese telephone makers ZTE and Huawei. They're much-loved Western brands, and they reverberate the mode Alcatel has distributed its conclusion-making across the world rather than keeping the decision-makers in People's republic of china. (ZTE is a chip more centralized than Alcatel, and Huawei is the near centralized of the three.)

While y'all aren't likely to see Palm-branded products any time soon, Alcatel phones volition exist tying in more than tightly with TCL TVs and consumer electronics, Maron said. TCL's TVs have by and large gotten expert reviews from PCMag because of their affordable cost and integrated Roku capabilities, and Alcatel'due south Idol 3 phone received our Editors' choice when it came out last year, for its low cost and nifty feature set.

This commodity originally appeared on PCMag.com.