PalmSource Inc said on Wednesday it is talking with Chinese mobile phone maker Ningbo Bird and an arm of TCL about licensing its Palm operating software for handheld devices. PalmSource President and Chief Executive David Nagel declined to say when agreements might be signed. "We're talking but it's very early in those discussions. We're not close to announcing anything," Nagel told Reuters on the sidelines of a technology conference in Shanghai.
Ningbo Bird is China's largest homegrown maker of cellphones, while the unit of TCL Corp Quote, Profile, Research) has joined forces with Alcatel to create a company that aspires to be among the world's top five mobile phone makers within a few years. PalmSource is striving to add customers in China even as its number two client, Sony Corp, announced on Tuesday it would stop selling new handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) based on the software outside Japan this year. PalmSource's shares tumbled 12 percent in New York on the news, which would decrease the number of new PDAs that need its operating system.
News source: Reuters
