News

palmOne will pay PalmSource $30 million for PalmSource's 55 percent share of the Palm Trademark Holding Company. Payment will be made in installments over 3.5 years. palmOne will change its company name to Palm, Inc. later this year. As part of the agreement, palmOne has granted PalmSource certain rights to Palm trademarks for PalmSource and its licensees for a four-year transition period.

"The letters P-A-L-M reflect a prized brand with significant customer awareness and earned loyalty," said Ed Colligan, palmOne president and chief executive officer. "Innovation, power, ease of use, and elegance all are attributes of the brand, and we intend to invest to turn what is a strong name today into a household word synonymous with leadership in mobile computing."

This news is actually pretty funny, considering we based them for changing the name last time around. Here's what they said when changing to palmOne:

"Our brand promise is so well understood by the marketplace that the concept of 'One' in our new name was immediately compelling," said Ken Wirt, Palm Solutions senior vice president and head of sales and marketing. "'One' is a powerful addition to the instant brand recognition and identity of the Palm name."

I responded with:

"Adding the Treo may give them a broad line of offerings, but adding the "One" to the name is really a poor decision. In his quote, Ken Wirt says, "Our brand promise is so well understood by the marketplace that the concept of 'One' in our new name was immediately compelling." If it's so well understood, then why change the name and the branding? Isn't that the point of good branding in the first place? I love the zen feeling they try to envelop with the reasoning behind the colors as well. I wonder what it was like the conference room when everyone was sitting around reviewing the names and new branding they no doubt spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on. Sheesh...I can't be the only one who thinks the basic Palm name was enough."

Two years later it looks like they should have listened, instead of losing some of the Palm brand equity and wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way.