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Tokyo software developer Access Co. Ltd. on Friday announced the acquisition of Palm operating system maker PalmSource Inc. for about $324.3 million in cash.
“The PalmSource family of software products, which run on over 39 million devices, and the PalmSource community of approximately 400,000 mobile application developers provide an established worldwide mobile software platform,” said Toru Arakawa, CEO of Access, in a company statement.
PalmSource has been an independent company since October 2003, when it spun off from handheld hardware maker Palm Inc.
Once the leader in the handheld device software market, the Palm OS has faced increasing competition in the past several years from Microsoft Corp.s Windows Mobile platform and other mobile phone operating systems.
Access is known for its NetFront Internet browser.
The merger has been approved by the board of both companies. It is expected to close by the end of 2005.