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As previously announced, palmOne today turned back time to become Palm, Inc. once more. The name change is a result of the mobile device manufacturer buying out PalmSource's 55 percent stake in the Palm Trademark Holding Company.

Although the company has gone by the palmOne moniker for close to two years, many people still refer to it and its handhelds by Palm.

"I’m confident we'll build our momentum even faster now that we can use the same term consumers and business people have always used for our products, Palm," says Ed Colligan, Palm President & CEO.

History
Palm, Inc. announced plans to drop the Palm moniker and split itself into two divisions during the fall of 2003. The transaction spun off PalmSource as a palmOne subsidiary responsible for developing and licensing the Palm platform for handheld computers and smartphones. It also resulted in the acquisition of rival Handspring.

Shareholders approved this proposal in early October 2003. A couple of weeks later, a more radical plan to separate palmOne and PalmSource into two distinct companies received shareholder endorsement.

Emblems
So in the fall of 2003 PalmSource stock started trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol PSRC. At the same time, PALM and HAND (Handspring) stopped trading, as palmOne changed its symbol to PLMO.

Today, it’s the PLMO symbol that gets tossed in the trash bin, while the reincarnated Palm moved once again to the PALM symbol.

Accompanying the name change is the release of a new company logo (see top image), which is slated to start appearing on Palm products this fall. The company asserts this modification—with an updated typeface to suggest a trend toward digital content and a more energetic color for the background, orange—will build upon the brand recognition of the former blue Palm circular medallion.

"It balances the past with the future, and signals to customers that they can expect to see a lot more of the name 'Palm' going forward in exciting mobile-computing products," exclaims Palm VP of marketing Page Murray.

Outlook
PalmOne reported positive financial results for its last fiscal quarter a couple of weeks ago. The company earned a net income of $17.7 million or 35 cents per share. Up from $13.3 million in net income a year earlier and 4 cents per share better than what analysts predicated.

Revenue grew by 26 percent over the same period to $335.8 million compared to $332 million predicted by the financial industry. That's palmOne's eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth.

The company attributed much of its recent success to its Treo line of smartphones. CEO Colligan said there was a 250 percent increase in Treo sales from the same quarter a year earlier and 57 percent growth from the previous quarter.

Hierarchy
Canalys reported in April that palmOne came in a distant second behind Nokia in the world's smart device (PDA & smartphones combined) market for first quarter 2005. The mobile phone giant accounted for 50 percent of all smart device shipments, while palmOne tallied 9.4 percent market share.

As you would expect, palmOne's success rested almost solely on the shoulders of its Treo series of smartphones (up 17 percent) and not its PDAs (down 27 percent). Treos were especially popular in the U.S., with 80 percent of shipments occurring in America.

To the chagrin of PalmSource, the Palm platform as a whole ranked third—behind Symbian (Nokia's OS of choice) with 82 percent of the market and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile with 18.3 percent market share—dropping from 22 percentfirst quarter last year earlier to just 10.5 percent this year.