Just got this email:

“SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2005 — Ed Colligan, Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM) president and chief executive officer; Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect; and Denny Strigl, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless, invite the news media to join them for a press conference on Monday, Sept. 26, at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco beginning at 9 a.m. PDT.”

This is to announce the poorly-kept secret that is the Treo running Windows Mobile. This comes the same day as Palm’s stock took a beating after it posted a wider quarterly loss and gave a disappointing outlook. The only real bright spot is Treo sales, though they still are significantly behind BlackBerry and Nokia smartphone sales.

All of this comes after PalmSource was bought by Access, PalmSource itself having bought Linux specialist China MobileSoft last year.

So what’s all this mean? The Palm OS, if not already dead, is nearly there. I’d lay most of the blame on the continued lack of multi-tasking, something that’s becoming more and more essential in the smartphone world. It had been promised in Palm OS Cobalt, which as far as I’m concerned is holed up somewhere with UIQ 3.0 and may or may not be found. It’s been far too long since both were announced with no products or any real movement. While I’m fairly certain we’ll see a UIQ 3 device soon, I can’t say the same about Cobalt. Why else would Palm go to Windows Mobile and risk alienating its most loyal backers?

Palm choosing Windows Mobile opens up some interesting possibilities. The Treo’s nowhere near as popular in Europe as it is in the US, with Symbian and Windows Mobile ruling the continent. Ewan Spence over at All About Symbian speculates that perhaps Palm might like to license Symbian and UIQ, then make a Palm “skin” that would allow it to retain the familar Palm look and feel, unlike Windows Mobile.

Whatever Palm does, it too needs to get things moving. I’m not going to get into PDA sales, that market is dying and inconsequential. It sold 470,000 Treos last quarter, which is a pittance. Its sole smartphone product is just a continuation of something it didn’t even develop. It’s going to have a hard time surviving with just one product with such relatively low sales.

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