ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (formerly PalmSource) is a subsidiary of

ACCESS Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access International Advisors, a hed ...

which develops the

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

PDA

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and its successor, the

Access Linux Platform The Access Linux Platform (ALP) is a discontinued open-source software based operating system, once referred to as a "next-generation version of the Palm OS," for mobile devices developed and marketed by Access Co., of Tokyo, Japan. The platform ...

, as well as

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

. PalmSource was spun off from Palm Computing, Inc. Palm OS runs on 38 million devices that have been sold since 1996 from hardware manufacturers including Palm, Inc.,

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, Aceeca,

AlphaSmart AlphaSmart, Inc., formerly Intelligent Peripheral Devices, Inc., was an education technology company founded in 1992 by Apple Computer engineers Joe Barrus and Ketan Kothari, and Kothari's brother, Manish Kothari. At the time of their initial rele ...

, Fossil, Inc.,

Garmin Garmin Ltd. is an American multinational technology company based in Olathe, Kansas. The company designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes GPS-enabled products and other navigation, communication, sensor-based, and information ...

Group Sense PDA Group Sense PDA Limited (GSPDA) is a Chinese manufacturer of personal digital assistants and smartphones. GSPDA is owned by Group Sense and is based in Hong Kong. One of its product lines is the Xplore series of personal digital assistants. It ...

(Xplore),

Kyocera is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power genera ...

, PiTech,

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

, and

Symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

. PalmSource also develops several programs for the Palm OS, and as of December 2005, PalmGear claims to offer 28,769 software titles of varying genres. Palm OS software programs can also be downloaded from CNET, PalmSource,

Handango Handango was an online store that sold mobile apps for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones. The company was headquartered in Irving, Texas. History Handango was founded in 1999 by Randy Eisenman. In 2003, it launched Handango ...

, and

Tucows Tucows Inc. is an American-Canadian publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States. The company is composed of three independent business ...

. PalmSource also owns

, which it purchased from

Be Inc. Be Inc. was an American computer company that created and developed the BeOS and BeIA operating systems, and the BeBox personal computer. It was founded in 1990 by former Apple Inc., Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée, who also served a ...

in August 2001.

History

In January 2002, Palm, Inc. set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, which was named PalmSource in February. In October 2003, PalmSource was spun off from Palm as an independent company, and Palm renamed itself

palmOne Palm, Inc., was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and developing software. Palm designed the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, and was known for the Treo 600, one of ...

. palmOne and PalmSource set up a holding company that owned the Palm trademark. In January 2004, PalmSource announced the successor to classic Palm OS called Palm OS Cobalt. However, it failed to gain support from hardware licensees. That December, PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft, a software company with a mobile

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

offering. As a result, PalmSource announced that they would extend Palm OS to run on top of the

Linux architecture The Linux kernel is a free and open source Unix-like kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system (OS) which was created ...

. In May 2005, palmOne purchased PalmSource's share of the Palm trademark for US$30 million and two months later renamed itself Palm, Inc. As part of the agreement, palmOne granted certain rights to Palm trademarks to PalmSource and licensees for a four-year transition period. Later that year, ACCESS, which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, including

NetFront NetFront Browser is a mobile browser developed by Access Company of Japan. The first version shipped in 1995. They currently have several browser variants, both Chromium-based and WebKit-based. Over its lifetime, various versions of NetFront h ...

, acquired PalmSource for US$324 million. In October 2006, PalmSource announced that it would rename itself to ACCESS, to match its parent company's name.Ed Hardy
PalmSource Changing Its Name
Brighthand, October 12, 2006.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

PalmSource Historical SEC Filings
Defunct software companies of the United States Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Palm, Inc.

History

See also

References

External links