Palm Computing and Symbian, two major developers of handhelds and operating systems for Net devices, have said they will work together to grow the wireless telephony market.
The two companies also will discuss licensing each other’s technologies.
The companies provided no details beyond that, but did indicate that the cooperation would result in new devices.
“Adding Palm Computing functionality to Symbian’s robust and scalable wireless platform, will result in new types of devices, providing both Symbian and Palm developers with a compelling new opportunity,” said Colly Myers, CEO of Symbian.
Palm’s operating system have, by far, the largest market share in the handheld sector but has had limited success with smart phones. Symbian has the strongest position as an operating system
provider for smart phones, but has had minimal success with handhelds.
Symbian is a consortium consisting of the leading smart phone vendors, including Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola.
The cooperation agreement clearly is an effort to prevent inroads into the Net device business by Microsoft and its Windows CE. Although the operating system has garnered little support among smart phone vendors, Microsoft has been demonstrating new technologies and pushing the OS this week at the Telecom ’99 show in Geneva.
Reports had been circulating for the last week that Palm and Symbian in some way would merge.