Palm turns to Texas to boost wireless

Handheld manufacturer Palm is to use technology from Texas Instruments (TI) to wirelessly connect its handsets.

The company said it intends to use TI's GSM and GPRS technology to enable the wireless connection of its handhelds, which should be available in around 12 months' time.

Todd Bradley, executive vice president of Palm's solutions group, explained that GSM and GPRS capabilities were increasingly important to the growing number of mobile enterprise users.

"Working together, we can accelerate the convergence of wireless voice, multimedia and data," he said.

Palm will use TI's Operation and Maintenance Application Point (Omap) processor platform as part of its plan to move product lines to ARM-based processors.

The companies said that they also intend to develop higher performance PDAs and longer lasting batteries, and speculated on future functions such as rich multimedia services and biometrics for security.

TI will also provide Palm with other silicon and software products, including modem processors, Omap application processors, radio frequency, analogue baseband technology and touch-screen controllers.