TCL readying Palm's return to the smartphone market, first device to be announced in early 2018

Not many people know that Chinese company TCL is the owner of a more or less extinct smartphone brand, Palm. Having acquired the Palm brand back in 2011, TCL did nothing to revive it in the last six years or so.

Perhaps the fact that LG purchased Palm's operating system was one of the reasons TCL was unable to bring new smartphones under this brand on the market. But that's about to change if we are to believe Android Planet's latest report.

It appears that TCL's Marketing Manager, Stefan Streit confirmed that his company is ready to revive the Palm brand and announced a new smartphone in early 2018. The Palm smartphone will not run WebOS/Palm OS or any other form of the old gesture-based operating system.

According to Streit, TCL will target three different types of customers with each of its brands. Alcatel will be aimed at “millenials,” BlackBerry will target enterprise consumers, while Palm is supposed to appeal to older users who still remember Palm as a trusted and high-quality brand.

The same report suggests that the next Palm products TCL plans to announce next year might not be limited to smartphones and could include a Palm Pilot as well.