Why would this be a surprise?

Because PalmSource shipped its "next-generation" Cobalt operating system to manufacturers at the end of last year. Cobalt isn't just an update to Palm OS 5 (now called Garnet), it is virtually a complete rewrite of the platform. At the time of its introduction, PalmSource touted Cobalt as the platform's play for the converged device market, which, obviously, includes smartphones (see PalmSource's Enterprising Strategy).

At the software company's annual developers' conference back in February 2004, PalmSource President and CEO David Nagel articulated a new company strategy: "to execute in the verticals, execute in the enterprise, and create a mass market via smartphones." OS Cobalt is a key factor for the achievement of these PalmSource goals. goals..

Furthermore, a number of the key features cited by the Times as part of the new PalmSource smartphone OS are already a part of Palm OS Cobalt. This includes, among other things, Bluetooth support, the ability to exploit all flavors of networking, and enablement of multiple sessions with different networks.

Nagel said last February that Cobalt would outfit users to function "in a sea of wireless networks," from Wi-Fi to mesh networks to metro Wi-FI and Wi-Max, plus the 2.5 and 3G wide area networks. "The door is open to full utilization of wireless networks," he said, including the ability to search for and download new applications over the air with Palm OS Cobalt.

New Smartphone OS?
Given these facts and factors, it seems likely to us that the New York Times doesn't really mean a brand new PalmSource OS for smartphones, rather, that smartphones built on a flavor of Palm OS Cobalt will finally start shipping in the coming months, after some delay. (In fact, the industry expected to see such devices last summer.)

Creating Cobalt devices has required far more tweaking and development time than expected, because it differed so much from the previous versions of the Palm OS. By contrast, the lag time between the introduction of Palm OS 5 a couple of years back and handhelds built on that platform took considerably less time than the appearance of Cobalt devices has, to date.

When we asked a palmOne representative about Cobalt last week, he told us that, to offset delays in the release of true Cobalt devices, the company has been able to port many of the features of the next-generation platform to Palm OS 5 for its latest devices with proprietary software. This gives palmOne users a shot at experiencing some of the advantages of the new OS without having to wait for Cobalt smartphones and PDAs to ship. (The spokesperson gave no timeframe as to when that might be.)