Unless you’re Google, these look like rough times to launch a mobile operating system. That puts Palm (PALM) in an awkward position. Things have not been going well for the beleaguered smartphone maker, whose founders arguably kickstarted the smartphone revolution 12 years ago. Eighty percent of its sales come from the troubled U.S. market, its Treo phone has given up market share to the BlackBerry and it has lost buzz to the iPhone."
The article goes on to list a number of reasons why it makes sense for Palm to consider using Google's Android as the basis for its next platform rather than sticking with its homegrown OS, code named Nova. Had Android come out a year earlier, I am sure Palm would have given it serious consideration, but now that they are relatively close to releasing Nova (9 months is close when you consider their last OS was released in 2002) could they really switch now? I think long term that would be a good solution, but short term it would be a very rocky road.