Palm CEO: New OS Delayed Until End of '08

Palm CEO Ed Colligan admitted this week that a new version of its operating system is at least a year and a half away, highlighting the continuing struggles of the PDA maker.

The new OS is intended to allow the company to expand beyond the PDA, however it is now somewhat unclear if the company will pursue such a strategy with the scrapping of the Foleo last month.

However, the scrapping of the Foleo may actually help to get the OS out sooner: engineers who were working on that project have been repurposed to the OS. Development is said to be moving "as well as possibly could be expected."

Regardless, no new version of Palm OS will appear until the end of 2008 at the earliest. However, by that point the software could be out of date, as development is quick on mobile platforms by Microsoft, RIM, Apple and others.

Palm licensed the rights to the Palm OS from Access back in December of 2006, the company that purchased its PalmSource software company spinoff in September 2005. At the time, it said it would be using the code to create a Linux-based version of the operating system, but that has yet to materialize.

However, in a conference call with investors, Colligan assured that the company's complete focus on pushing the next generation operating system out the door. He even said that the company will likely try again on a Foleo-like device, although did not provide any concrete details.

"Our customers are our most important asset," he said during the call. "We want to be sure that their transition to our next-generation platform ... is seamless."