This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Palm devices are often palm sunday quotes as “the first wildly popular handheld computers,” responsible for ushering in the smartphone era. Most of Palm’s PDAs and mobile phones ran the in-house Palm OS software which was later also licensed to other OEMs.

A few devices ran on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Palm, although in essence it bears no relation to the original Palm devices. The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing in 1992. The prototype for the first Palm Connected Organizer was called “Palm Taxi”.

The first Palms, the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000, had no infrared port, backlight, or flash memory, but did have a serial communications port. Their RAM size was 512 kB and 1024 kB respectively. They used version 2 of the Palm OS. Palm III, and all the following Palms, did not have the word “Pilot” in their name due to the previously mentioned trademark dispute. The Palm III had an IR port, backlight, and flash memory. Meanwhile, with Palm Computing now a subsidiary of 3Com, the founders felt they had insufficient control over the development of the Palm product. As a result, they left 3Com and founded Handspring in June 1998.

When they left Palm, Hawkins secured a license for the Palm OS for Handspring, and the company became the first Palm OS licensee. The next versions of Palm used Palm OS 3. Palm V with 2 Megabytes of memory, and, Palm Vx with 8 Megabytes of memory. Palm VII had wireless connection to some Internet services, but this connection worked only within the United States. Palm IIIc was the first Palm handheld with a color screen. 5 which provided extensive tools for writing color applications.

Some of these newer handhelds, for example Palm V, used internal rechargeable batteries. Later, this feature became standard for all Palms. By 2000, Palm had some 74 percent market share, however it was now losing relevance following the launch of Microsoft’s Pocket PC platform. The Palm Treo 700p is one of many smartphones produced that combines Palm PDA functions with a cell phone, allowing for built-in voice and data. Palm handhelds continued to advance, including the ability to access computer hard drives via USB cables, and began to merge with smartphones.