Palm: Whither Go You?

Anyone remember when the Palm was essentially the defacto PDA of the corporate and business type - any Suit worth their salt would be wielding one and have it sync'ing to their office computer via its cradle, this positioned in a place of honour on the desk?
It was the Windows PDA OS (and the aptly named WinCE) that was considered suspect by the corporate IT boffins and, as such, was hardly ever seen in polite corporate circles. And certainly not connected to a company network.

But then Palm did a Netscape.

They got smug and lazy and, in the meantime, Handspring, RIM and Microsoft were busy. Palm killed off Handspring by acquisition (giving Palm the Treo) but their failure to keep pace with the competitors means it is now PalmOS devices that are the outsiders looking in, trying to gain the respect and confidence of the corporate IT crowd.

As simply a hardware manufacturer now, it may be that Palm sees the only way to guarantee anything of market share in that world is to dump their traditional OS in favour of one that is allowed to play on the corporate networks now.

Handspring took the Palm from the business world and made it affordable, fun and accessable to students, home and SOHO users. WinMobile, while watching the corporate crowd, has also managed to appeal to this market with an OS that is multimedia-friendly. Palm seems to have dumped these users entirely in favour of business or as providers of smartphones as a 3rd Party.

Then again, if PalmSource creates a viable LinuxOS, maybe the whole kit and kaboodle will look attractive for acquisition by Apple? I'm sure they could make it 'cool' again. Anyone for the pMac?