Is Palm OS Dead? What Do You Think?

This just in from the N.S. Sherlock Institute for the Bleeding Obvious: Palm’s new bet-the-company operating system, webOS, is intended as a replacement for, not an alternative to, its embarrassingly antiquated Palm OS. Speaking at the Thomas Weisel Technology & Telecom Conference today, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said the company won’t release any more Palm OS-based products after the Centro hits end-of-life. In the future, most Palm (PALM) devices will run webOS, with Windows Mobile being used on a few enterprise-class smartphones.

A few other noteworthy remarks from Colligan:

• The Pre will launch in concert with an application store that allows for over-the-air and USB downloads.
• The company is hammering out Pre partnerships with carriers in Canada, Latin America and Europe and plans to expand to U.S. carriers outside of Sprint (S) in 2010.
• Palm isn’t worried about a battle with Apple (AAPL) over the company’s iPhone intellectual property. Colligan says the company has 15 years worth of patents that could be brought to bear in such a conflict if need be, though he doesn’t expect one to occur. “We’re very respectful about people’s intellectual property, we believe we’re huge innovators and have been for a lot of years and that this product has an enormous number of innovations in it,” he said. “If something does happen there, we do have the portfolio, we think, to defend ourselves and to be successful doing that. But nothing’s happened to date, so we’re really just focused on getting the product out the door.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Don’t Forget the Multi-Touch Prior Art in Minority Report
• Apple Awarded Patent on Palm Pre Gesture Area?
• Palm to Apple: Bring It
• Apple COO: “We Will Not Stand for Having Our IP Ripped Off”