PalmSource Inc. has received a US$20 million minority equity investment by Sony Corp. that will result in its ownership of about six percent share of Palm’s operating system subsidiary.
Sony has been a Palm OS licensee since 1999 and makes the Palm OS-based CLIE personal entertainment organizer product line.
Sony’s investment in PalmSource is a further step toward establishing PalmSource as an independent company, according to Keiji Kimura, corporate senior vice president of Sony, and David Nagel, president and chief executive officer of PalmSource. On July 27, 2001, Palm announced that its Platform Solutions Group, which develops and licenses the Palm operating system, would be spun off into a wholly owned subsidiary.