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TCL to Revive Palm with Help from the Tech Community

Jan 6, 2015, 6:01 PM by Eric M. Zeman
updated Jan 6, 2015, 6:05 PM

TCL Communications, the parent company of Alcatel OneTouch, today confirmed to Phone Scoop that it has acquired the Palm brand and plans to revive the failed tech company. "We are interested in the brand because we believe the brand has value," said TCL CEO George Guo. "It was once a very strong brand and there are many fans of this brand around the world, including people at TCL." TCL intends to resurrect Palm with new hardware, software, and services — but not on its own. It will ask the community to contribute ideas for potential new devices, operating systems, and apps. It will commit engineers and its manufacturing resources to the project, but hopes much of the R&D will come from the tech community at large. TCL said it hasn't worked out the details of how this community-driven revival will function, but it is confident it can restore luster to the brand. "Palm was an original pioneer and we want to keep it that way. We want to attract the people who have ideas on how to revive the brand in a meaningful way." Guo shot down the idea of using webOS, which is owned by LG, and ran on the Palm Pre, Pixi, and other phones. "We are open to all ideas, but probably not webOS," said Guo. "Palm built by Palm fans is the intent." TCL expects to eventually offer both Alcatel- and Palm-branded products in the US. TCL said it couldn't comment on the terms of the acquisition. It will provide more details as they are developed.

source: TCL

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Comments

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This forum is closed.

JoelMikel

Jan 7, 2015, 12:08 AM
edited

nevermind

no WebOS.... no good

it will not succeed without WebOS

DarkStar

Oh yes because Palm did so great with webOS. It totally saved them from the brink of disa... Oh wait it didn't save anything. It couldn't compete with iOS and Android. And this is coming from some who liked his original Palm Pre. But that one had to ...
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thebriang

Jan 7, 2015, 3:03 PM

So basically...

We bought the rights for the brand name from whichever tech garage sale held the rights last, and we were kind of hoping that the community at large could do all the dev work on the software. Then we'll build the hardware just like the other crap OneTouch's and reap all the profits. What a deal.

The Victor

So you have a problem with a company openly asking what everyone wants in a device?

Here i thought thats what companies already do, by taking feedback from their customers from the model currently out that theyd like to see improved or would like t...
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