Symbian CEO Colly Myers has trailed the prospect of further co-operation with Palm. The two companies co-developing a port of Palm's pen-based UI to Symbian for Nokia, so presumably Myers is anticipating more of the same.

Actually, we're relieved to hear that the two are working on the Nokia gig. That announcement was widely telegraphed last year, but when it finally came out it basically boiled down to Nokia and Palm announcing that they'd try to agree - white-knuckle negotiations or what? We note however that subsequently the October announcement was firmed up into a real, live agreement.

The two do however make interesting bedfellows. Symbian has a robust OS that runs on a 32 bit chip with a future, while Palm has a useful UI that has plenty of mindshare. Working with Symbian gives Palm a more solid and future-proof base platform, and possibly a ticket into the mobile phone market.

Depending on the nature of any new deal, there could be scope for a certain amount of friction with Symbian co-founder Psion. An ARM-EPOC platform with Palm's UI on top would be an interesting contender for smartphone OEM deals, but would it be a Symbian reference design, or would it be a Palm one? The pecking order clearly has considerable bearing on who gets first run at selling the platform. Psion itself intimated last Autumn that it would be putting more effort into attacking Palm's sector of the market, so we can probably foresee more of those interesting negotiations. ®