The widely lauded mobile OEM Palm – a subsidiary of TCL – will reportedly be making a return to the mobile market in 2018. The speculation stems from, according to the source, a confirmation by TCL Marketing Manager Stefan Streit that 2018 will see the arrival of new Palm-branded products. However, while it is both easy and tempting to expound on Streit’s remarks for an Android-based Palm Pilot smartphone or Palm tablet, it is equally important to note that Streit appeared hesitant to pin down exactly what kinds of devices will be launched.
Streit also reportedly hinted at how TCL will be splitting brands by the intended target audience for the upcoming next generation of devices to be released in 2018. More specifically, although Streit didn’t mention which demographic the TCL brand itself is aimed toward, he did say that Palm would be the brand attached to devices the company wants to market to older audiences That’s as compared to Alcatel, which TCL targets toward the Millennials demographic or BlackBerry, which is intentionally targeted the business markets. Beyond that clue, it could be said that Streit also seemed hesitant to suggest that Palm will be focused on affordable low-spec or mid-range devices, either. It’s suggested that the Palm brand will be marketed primarily at users who are beyond the Millennial age bracket and are looking for the “latest in technology.”
Unfortunately, whether or not the Palm name will actually be seen on mobile devices being brought to market in 2018 is unclear. Since there has still not been any official word about the brand – at least since rumors of the brand returning started in 2014 – it is hard to gauge whether or not the proposition can be taken seriously. Mobile devices are also not the only electronics created under the TCL umbrella, so Streit could easily have been pointing to something that isn’t mobile-related at all for the future of the Palm brand. It goes almost without saying that there is simply too much speculation to reach any kind of conclusion about what, exactly, TCL plans to do with Palm for the time being.