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palmOne is dead, long live Palm
 Today marks the date palmOne becomes Palm. The company begins trading under the symbol PALM, and released a new company logo which will begin appearing on products this fall.
Today's news follows an announcement on May 24 that the company had acquired unencumbered rights to the Palm brand by buying out the share of the brand formerly controlled by PalmSource, Inc.
"I'm confident we'll build our momentum even faster now that we can use the same term consumers and business people have always used for our products PALM," said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. "And while a lot has changed our name, ticker, logo and headquarters our vision remains the same. We believe the future of personal computing is 'mobile computing,' and we aim to deliver superior hardware and software solutions so that we can continue to set the bar in the industry."
The new logo builds upon the strong brand equity already established in the former blue Palm circular medallion, but the updated typeface suggests the trend toward digital content and an orange gradated background evokes energy. The logo was created by Turner Duckworth, a leader in brand identity design that counts among its customers Amazon.com and Coca-Cola. Turner Duckworth has created Palm and palmOne brand identities since the original blue medallion logo, including Zire, Tungsten and LifeDrive.
"Our new logo takes advantage of the high brand awareness we've built over time through award-winning and commercially successful handheld computers and smartphones," said Page Murray, Palm vice president of marketing. "It balances the past with the future, and signals to customers that they can expect to see a lot more of the name 'Palm' going forward in exciting mobile-computing products."
Russell Research found strong aided and unaided awareness for the Palm brand within Palm's key target market. In a study conducted among business professionals, the Palm brand was readily volunteered by 27 percent of respondents when asked to name a company that makes PDAs or handheld computers. Russell also found that 55 percent of these respondents were aware of Palm in total -- on either a voluntary or prompted basis.
"Palm's brand awareness is surprisingly high and a very valuable corporate asset," said John De Biasio, a partner at Russell. "Palm maintains the highest awareness level of any company in the category. And the potential is very good for the company to build on its brand awareness given the many positive attributes customers link to it today."
palmOne was created in October 2003 when the earlier Palm spun off PalmSource and acquired Handspring. At that time, the decision was made to share the Palm brand between palmOne and PalmSource. Over time, customers have come to identify the name Palm more with physical products than with the operating system that powers it.
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