What's Palm Brewing Up For CES?

This week, Palm sent out invitations to an event it is hosting at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas during CES. The invite asked attendees to "Come to CES to see all that Palm New-ness you've been waiting for."

What's Palm got up its sleeve?

Most likely, Palm will unveil its latest operating system, which the company has long talked about but has yet to deliver. The operating system, dubbed "Nova," is a Linux-based mobile operating system. In past years, Palm has been chided for not bringing its operating system up to snuff to a competitive level where it can go head to head with BlackBerry and other smartphone market champions. To help compensate, Palm partnered with Microsoft to offer devices based on Windows Mobile, even as it continued to deliver handhelds based on its own operating system.

Palm has whispered about a new operating system since October 2007, and its old operating system has seen few updates or revisions over the years, falling into a sort of obsolescence.

Before encountering struggles, Palm was the first true smartphone maker, but lack of corporate direction made Palm lose focus. In the meantime, device makers stepped up their game, with BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) and the Apple iPhone taking away Palm's already dwindling market share.

Offering a peek at the new operating system in January -- and following through with new devices that would come throughout the year -- could help Palm regain some of the luster it once had.

On Dec. 1, Palm said its second fiscal quarter revenue would be between $190 million and $195 million, about a 90 percent drop from the first quarter. Along with cutting its forecast, Palm on Dec. 1 also announced it would trim its U.S. workforce, tighten European operations and move its Asian-Pacific sales to the U.S.

The new Nova operating system could provide a welcome boost.