There was a point in time when the Palm brand enjoyed a certain level of popularity in the U.S., with the Palm Pre and Palm Centro touted as its popular products.
In 2008, the latter had been ranked as the second top U.S. smartphone based on the 75 percent Internet traffic that it was responsible for across the Palm devices.
The Palm Pre was also launched at the CES event five years ago. For a brief period, the device's accompanying webOS seemed to be a strong competition to Apple's iOS. However, Palm failed to reach its full potential as Android had also begun making noises.
After the company was bought by HP in 2010, the latter announced a year later that it was discontinuing the production of all webOS devices, including mobile phones and tablets.
Rumor has it that after HP's acquisition of the brand, the company was mishandled. However, under the stewardship of Alcatel One Touch, Palm is determined not to be just a memory in the history of smartphones as the company is making a comeback .
According to rumors, Wide Progress Global Limited has acquired the Palm brand from HP, including its trademarks. The company is said to be holding these trademarks for the Alcatel One Touch brand, which is owned by TCL Corporation, a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer.
While no official announcement has been made just yet, several factors suggest how the Palm brand and Alcatel can actually be connected. One of them is the appointment of Nicolas Zibell as the vice president for Wide Progress Global, which occurred just when the company acquired the trademark. Incidentally, Zibell also is the senior VP of Alcatel's American unit.
Another thing to consider is that Palm's official site now redirects users to a different site called mynewpalm.com. Apart from featuring the familiar orange Palm logo, the site also displays the slogans "Coming Soon" and "Smart move" underneath. The latter is also the tagline used by Alcatel One Touch.
Judging from this information, it can be deduced that Alcatel One Touch has most likely acquired the Palm trademarks and plans to launch a Palm-branded device from its premises. The target market could be the U.S. since it is the region where the Palm brand was highly popular.
If plans push through, Alcatel may launch a Palm-branded device that will run on Android. Of course, the company may keep the lineup closely aligned to its midrange and pocket-friendly Android devices.
