Initially setup by eight international mobile operators—mmO2, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SMART Communications, Telefónica Móviles, TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile), T-Mobile, and Vodafone—last June, the OMTP group has grown to 40 members and participates since its inception.

Its mandate is to create a consistent user experience across mobile devices to provide a more reliable and enhanced user experience. The group aims to achieve this goal by delineating platform requirements for standardized platform interfaces.

On the flipside, the group also wishes to facilitate the ability for wireless carriers operators and device manufacturers to customize and differentiate their offerings.

To PalmSource, it and the OMTP group share similar goals.

PalmSource’s VP of business development Albert Chu said, "The efforts of the Open Mobile Terminal Platform group are in line with PalmSource's strategy to enable a consistent and intuitive user experience across wireless handhelds and smartphones through open standards."

Towards that end, PalmSource plans to merge the Palm operating system (OS) with the OMTP group's requirements.

Membership in the OMPTP group isn’t PalmSource’s only recent move towards a more interoperable and flexible platform. In December, the company announced plans to buy China Mobile Soft Limited, upping its profile in the most populous country in the world, and expanding its mobile handset offerings beyond the Palm OS.

CMS offers a Linux-based phone platform, plus other applications for mobile handsets and smartphones, that PalmSource will use to create a Linux version of the Palm platform.

This Linux-based Palm platform should feature the same interface and software frameworks as Palm OS Garnet and Palm OS Cobalt, which will continue to be supported. Not only will the new Linux OS and software feature the Palm look-and-feel, it’ll also be data compatible. So, in theory, the traditional Palm operating systems and the Linux Palm platform should be capable of running the same applications.

PalmSource's CMS acquisition and membership in the OMTP share the same objective; increasing the profile of the Palm platform, while expanding the number and types of devices running PalmSource software.

State of Palm Platform
As of December, the Palm OS continued its steady decline in terms of market share in the embedded OS market of late. According to a pair of recent studies, the embedded crown now rests with Microsoft.

Gartner Research reported that Microsoft beat Palm in third-quarter 2004 PDA OS shipments, marking the first time that Microsoft has beaten the perennial PDA OS leader in the category that Palm helped to create. Palm OS shipments declined by 28 percent, and its market share fell from 46.9 percent in the third quarter of 2003 to 29.8 in in the third quarter of this year. Windows CE recorded 32.6 percent growth and saw its share hit 48.1 percent up from 41.2 percent last year.