Back in January, palmOne's Head of Europe Vesey Crichton expressed interest to the Swedish publication Allt om Handdatorer in the Symbian OS and Nokia's implementation of that platform.

He was quoted as saying that PalmOne's take on the Palm OS is that it is "not viewed internally as a religion." As Palm Inc., PalmOne invented the Palm operating system with PalmSource, which is now a separate company. palmOne was and still is the largest supplier of Palm OS devices.

At a conference call to analysts this week, palmOne President and CEO Todd Bradley responded to a question as to whether the company would create a version of the Treo 600 based on Windows Mobile. He said, "one of the drivers to the separation was so that each company could optimize their products for their specific customers. That being said, we haven't announced any Microsoft-based products but there's nothing that would preclude us from building one, Microsoft, Symbian, Linux, anything."

While the thought of palmOne implementing another operating system in some manner may come as a shock, it is not completely surprising after its separation from PalmSource. As a hardware only vendor now, palmOne is free to pursue any avenue, including alternative operating systems, that would make its products more appealing, and therefore helping the bottom line, which in turn would make shareholders happy.

Take Europe for instance, the Symbian OS is used in the lion's share of smartphones, which as a market is growing at a much faster rate than the PDA market. Palm OS and Windows Mobile smartphone units sell in far fewer quantities in Europe, though Windows Mobile is expected to become Symbian's chief smartphone rival. Should palmOne decide to create a Symbian smartphone for the European market, then it would benefit from the brand recognition that comes with the palmOne name while offering a product that is more in line with what European consumers want, a Symbian-based phone.