Palm says if you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em

Once upon a time Palm was the undisputed king of the PDA market. But times change, and the company has gone through more name changes than Sean Combs: Palm Computing was acquired by US Robotics, which was in turn acquired by 3Com; Palm became an independent subsidiary, then spun off its own subsidiary PalmSource, to develop the PalmOS. Then Palm bought PDA maker Handpsring (which had been created by Palm’s disgruntled founders), and renamed itself palmOne. Then palmOne bought out PalmSource’s trademark and became Palm, Inc; PalmSource renamed themselves ACCESS, after the parent company that bought them out, and Palm, Inc. has bought all rights to PalmOS back from ACCESS.

Whew. It’s almost as convoluted as Heroes or Lost, only, you know, way more boring. Meanwhile, Palm has faced increasing pressure in the PDA/smartphone market from the likes of Windows Mobile. With Apple now coming up strong, Palm’s apparently decided that they need to get serious again. So they’ve decided to hire an Apple alum, Paul Mercer, to work on a line of new projects.

Mercer was lead designer on System 7’s Finder and later left Apple to found a company named Pixo that created the tools used by Apple to develop the iPod’s interface. More recently, he worked on Samsung’s Z5 MP3 player.

“He’s the best of the best in this space,” said Paul Saffo, an adviser to Samsung and a Silicon Valley forecaster. “The guy has a knack for designing complex systems in ways that are accessible.”

While it’s a step in the right direction, it might be too little too late for Palm. One person can make a difference, but only if the people in power are willing to listen to them. And with the iPhone due in just three months, Palm’s got a lot of work to do.

[Photo via San Francisco Chronicle]