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A posting on ACCESS's Web site appears to indicate the company's follow-up to the Palm OS, the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP), will be delayed by up to a half year, until the the first part of 2007 as opposed to the end of 2006. According to ACCESS spokesperson Maureen O'Connell, this is not the case.

She tells PalmInfocenter that a pre-release version of the PDK (product development kit) is already in the hands of some licensees and a pre-release edition of the SDK (software development kit) has shipped to some companies as well.

The timing of when a device maker receives a PDK goes a long way towards determining how long it takes for them to develop and release a smartphone based on ALP. The same goes for the SDK and how ready developers will be with ALP-compatible applications when actual devices built on the operating system start to ship.

By letting both licensees and developers receive early versions of its development kits, ACCESS is allowing them to get a head start on product (hardware and software) creation. This way companies will be ready for the general availability of the ALP PDK and SDK, which is slated to happen sometime during the first half of next year.

O'Connell's stated timing of general availability jibes with (and clarifies) ACCESS's FAQ, which says the company will announce ALP's official name when the platform is available - "expected sometime in the first half of 2007" - but does not mention the pre-release SDK or PDK.

It is still too early to tell whether smartphones built on ALP will actually ship before the end of 2007, however.

In related news, ACCESS has enlisted Zi Corporation to provide its text input solutions for ALP. In fact, the companies inked a licensing agreement to allow ACCESS to pre-integrate Zi's eZiText predictive text technology and Decuma handwriting recognition into the new mobile OS.

The companies said this pre-integration is expected to accelerate the introduction of devices that incorporate Zi technology while providing a vehicle for ACCESS’s third party developer community to leverage eZiText and Decuma in applications targeted for devices based on the ALP.

Zi will receive unit license fees from OEM’s for eZiText or Decuma-enabled ALP devices.

Last week, Zi earned another design win. This one with Trolltech, which is integrating Zi's text input solutions into Greenphone, a limited-edition Linux-based smartphone designed to encourage developers to create, test and modify applications for Trolltech's Qtopia Linux mobile platform.