Jimmie Geddes of gadgetsonthego.net today reported: "I just heard from a ***very reliable source*** that there is indeed a ... Symbian Treo in the works for both CDMA and GSM networks." (emphasis in original)
This statement, in and of itself, does not help. It revolves around the definition of "in the works", and we cannot help but note that the existence of a prototype Symbian Treo would render his statement absolutely accurate. That such a prototype might exist is eminently believable, simply because Palm would appear to have had difficulty adapting the Palm OS into a smartphone platform, it has at any rate lost control of it's OS, and building a prototype would seem prudent.
However, two other factoids make the idea that Palm is indeed striving to release a Symbian OS Treo (along with a Palm, and Windows Treo) eminently believable. First, recall that two weeks ago Guy Kewney said: "the problem is that there's some core Symbian code, which Nokia says belongs to Nokia. And Symbian is caught between UIQ and Nokia in this, and so the phone is, politely, a bodge." Second, Nokia has just released the Nokia E61 (pictured above) - a Symbian Series 60 device with quadband, WiFi, and a seemingly solid competitor to such a Treo.
Kewney's comment did not seem to make sense, since Symbian OS is supposedly open to new licencees, and Nokia does not even make UIQ phones. (Note: UIQ and Series 60 are different user interfaces for the Symbian core OS; applications are not (yet?) cross-compatible.) It does not even make sense for Nokia to be baulking even if Palm wanted to use Series 60 - this has been licensed to multiple other manufacturers (although there are only three shipping products; the Panasonic X800, X700 and Siemens SX1; note that the Samsung phones are also scheduled to arrive soon).
However, looking at it from the perspective of business advantage, Palm would have gained plenty of mindshare were it able to announce and ship a Symbian OS device in the Treo form factor first. There would simply be no competition, and Palm would thereby leverage upon both it's existing brand equity as well as the reputation of Symbian. Again, this is not a problem - unless Nokia was about to reveal a competing device.
Given the past history of Symbian, it seems that Palm will eventually obtain a licence - we bet that Nokia will stop raising objections soon after the Nokia E61 ships in quantity.
If that does happen - Ewan Spence was right all along.
