News: The Access acquisition

By now you've seen that Access is acquiring PalmSource. I'm really glad to see it, as PalmSource hasn't been doing very well this past year, and needed a boost from a major player with more resources. That said, I'm not a big believer in acquisitions, having struggled to incorporate the seven (or was it eight?) acquisitions we made at Lineo. Novell has done better with its acquisitions, but it's no secret that there is always difficulty merging two corporate cultures, roadmaps, etc.

All that said, I remain a believer that

"When I think of the Linux desktop of the future, I think of it on my phone; on the embedded devices I spend most of my time with. The only thing that has been missing is the applications...."

I said this when PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft (Madeline Duva, CMS' former CEO, incidentally, is up to something....), and still believe it. We may be a long way off from that vision, but the fact remains that mobile devices (especially phones) are increasingly the one computing device everyone has, whether in China, the United States, Nigeria, or Hungary. The "game" eventually goes to the company that can serve that market best.