TCL Communication, which is the company behind the Alcatel OneTouch brand, has confirmed it is taking control of the Palm brand. It says it’ll create a new US-based Palm Inc. company.
However, the exact timing of the Palm project hasn’t been confirmed.
In a statement, TCL said “Palm has always carried a lot of affect and emotions. That's why TCL has set the direction to rebuild the brand involving Palm's very own community, making it the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry. The objective goes far beyond proposing a more advanced device. It is to deliver absolute breakthrough innovations in Technology, Design, User Experience, Eco-system, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Business Models.”
HP bought Palm - best known for its PDAs - in 2010, later turning Palm’s webOS operating system into an open-source project. LG subsequently adopted webOS for its smart TVs.
China-based TCL Communication employs over 16,000 people - including 5,000 engineers - and currently claims to be the world’s fifth largest handset vendor.