Palm (NSDQ: PALM) sent out invitations to reporters yesterday, asking them to come to a press conference at CES in January, which is fueling speculation that the struggling smartphone-maker may be close to announcing its new operating system. The invitation read: “Come to CES to see all the Palm New-ness you’ve been waiting for,” reports PC Magazine.
The new operating system, which has been under development for more than a year, can’t seem to come fast enough. Just last week, the company reported preliminary financial results for its second quarter ended Nov. 28, saying that it expects its revenues to fall compared to the previous quarter and that it is trimming staff and consolidating offices in order to save up to $20 million a quarter. Palm said in January 2008 that the OS would likely appear in early 2009. The new OS would replace Palm OS 5, which is now more than six years old, and would hopefully be competitive with today’s new offerings. “With Palm management reiterating in recent months that the new Palm OS would be completed by calendar year-end 2008, speculation is likely to be that this will be the venue for the formal introduction of the new next gen OS,” wrote Avi Cohen of Avian Securities, in a research note on Thursday. “Given the timing of the event and the scale of the venue (CES), we would agree with this notion.”
An announcement of some kind wouldn’t mean necessarily that phones would actually be available. Cohen: “Working backwards, we believe this requires that the device enter carrier testing sometime between now and late February at the latest.”
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