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There's no denying that PalmSource, which handles the Palm operating system, has been hurting lately. Earlier this year they lost Sony as a licensee, they're having trouble getting anyone to use Cobalt, the latest version of the Palm OS, and there are these persistent rumors that even their baby daddy palmOne/Palm might start fooling around on the side with Windows Mobile. Which is why it's really promising to hear the news that they've signed up a major new licensee for the Palm OS. They won't say exactly who it is until they make a formal announcement, but reportedly it's going to be one of the "top five global handset providers," and last time we checked those five were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG. Probably won't be Nokia, since they're wedded to Symbian, Samsung already is a Palm licensee (even if they don't seem particularly enthusiastic about it lately), and it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that it'd be SE, since Sony's clearly turned its back on Palm as a platform, which leaves just Motorola and LG. If we had to guess, we'd probably say that it's Moto, since they already have a few different Linux-powered smartphones on the market and so would probably be receptive to the new Linux-based version of the Palm OS that's in the works, but LG's been pushing out in some interesting directions lately, so it wouldn't be shocking if it were them, either. Or maybe PalmSource has a completely different way of ranking the "top five global handset providers" and it's another company entirely.

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