So Alcatel (sorry, TCL) have confirmed what we knew – they bought the Palm branding. Unsurprisingly, they officially announced it at CES. What IS a bit more surprising is the announcement that they are somehow bringing back the spirit of Palm in the silicon valley and also engaging with “Palm’s very own community”.

I don’t know if that is meant to be those on webOS Nation and the other dedicated forums around the world or the various engineers of Palm’s past who have moved onto various projects including webOS TV, Android and Pebble watches.

TCL have wisely avoided use of the term, “In the coming months”, but, “The exact timeline of the rollpout of the Palm project will be communicated at a later date.”

I wish TCL/Palm well in their goal to be an innovative company. I suspect that to get the interest of the community of people who have stuck with Palm products for this long, their new devices will need to run PalmOS, webOS or something else; something new that’s equally innovative.

At the moment it doesn’t appear that webOS features in their plans. Perhaps their best bet for a community is to grow a new one around a genuinely ground-breaking product?

Here’s Derek Kessler’s article at webOS Nation.

The discussion thread – Remember, My New Palm may be reading your ideas for the future!

Here’s the original press release from TCL.