OK, so I wrote about why Palm needs Android. Now I am going to help them with their overall strategy while I'm at it.

I listened to an episode of the 1src podcast a few months back, and it was mentioned that Palms strategy is to have three tiers of devices:

1. Entry level - running PalmOS Classic. These devices will be cheap smartphones to get people into the smartphone word from the feature-phone world. These devices would be devices like the Palm Centro. They may even retain the Centro naming convention for these devices.

2. Mid Level - running PalmOS II (Nova) and focused toward a more advanced user group, but not quite up to the enterprise level.

3. Enterprise Level - Running Windows Mobile. These devices will be like the Palm Pro and aimed at businesses and super-duper-uber users.

Now is a previous post I had mentioned how Palm should go for android and halt development of PalmOS II. In addition to that, Palm should also completely eliminate PalmOS Classic and get in bed with Symbian.

If Palm continues to court Windows Mobile, they've got the business user. If they go with Android, as I said in a previous post, they gain from the many apps that will be developed, and they can tailor the android experience with their palm know how.

Where does Symbian fit in?

Well, symbian is the largest mobile OS in the world. It has a lot of apps already available! Palm is not a known brand in Europe, but if they run Symbian they can make a bigger splash in the market over there. Palm is a well known name in North America, so running symbian benefits them because they will be building upon the great library of apps already available for symbian AND moving forward.

PalmOS classic at the moment is stagnant and has no future. Why invest in an entry level line that runs an obsolete OS?

Palm should look into making symbian phones both for entry and mid level clients.