ALP-powered Emblaze Edelweiss shelved in favor of Monolith? (original) (raw)

Rumor: With Palm OS Garnet already put out to pasture and Thursday's confirmation that Palm is dropping Windows Mobile, Access' ALP remains the one non-WebOS operating system still of interest to Palm-watchers.

Now, according to a Talking Mobile report (via this Israeli site) from August that flew underneath everyone's radar, rumors are suggesting that the mythical Edelweiss ALP-powered smartphone has been shelved in favor of the company's so-called Monolith device.

As you may recall from our story last October, the Israel-based Emblaze Mobile's Edelweiss smartphone was slated to go on sale in Russia in late 2008. With the demise of the Edelweiss, the Monolith remains the company's sole pending product, supposedly still in development with the assistance of partners Sharp and Access. In fact, the Talking Mobile story dated August 29th claims that Monolith "...production will start this year".

While no references remain to the Edelweiss or its URL, the Emblaze Mobile website does claim that the Monolith's launch is still slated for the 2nd half of 2009, though no word on carrier partners or product specifications is available. Little has been heard out of Access since last August when the company repositioned ALP as a solution for tablet-like MIDs as opposed to being a purely smartphone-oriented OS.