PalmSource

PalmSource is the operating system division of Palm that was spun off in 2002. Palm then renamed itself palmOne, but has since renamed itself once again back to Palm. In 2004 PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft, a Chinese company that was developing a version of the Linux OS for mobile devices. PalmSource then announced that the next version of the Palm OS would run on top of Linux, and that the upcoming Palm OS 6 (aka Cobalt) OS would be killed off. PalmSource was since purchased by ACCESS in 2005, and in late 2007 dropped Palm from its name completely, now calling itself ACCESS, like its parent. In January 2007 ACCESS announced that it was dropping the Palm OS name for its OS offering and would instead call it the Garnet OS. Garnet was the codename for Palm OS v5.

Palm OS

Palm OS is the operating system used on the Palm Pilot and Treo lines of PDAs and smartphones sold by Palm, as well as those sold by many other companies, including Sony. ACCESS, the company that absorbed PalmSource, has renamed the product to be the Garnet OS. Palm, the hardware company, formerly palmOne, currently has a license that allows it to further develop Palm OS 5, which was commonly referred to by its development codename of Garnet. The original planned successor of Palm OS 5 was Cobalt (Palm OS 6). Cobalt has since been killed off in favor of a future system that runs on top of a mobile Linux OS.