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Japan's ACCESS surprised much of the mobile world when it swooped in and bought Palm platform developer PalmSource for $324 million last year. Since that time the company has introduced a Linux OS for smartphones called the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP) that integrates open source, aspects of the Palm OS and ACCESS's own NetFront browser.

The International Herald Tribune recently interviewed the ACCESS's technical officer, Tomihisa Kamada, who laid out the company's aspiration's for PalmSource and its mobile platform.

Kamada said ACCESS wants to grow its share of the smartphone market to 30 percent by 2010. A tall order, considering it only has 4 percent of the market now, due to its purchase of PalmSource; compared to 61 percent for Symbian and 12 percent for Microsoft, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

The problem is ACCESS's road to 30 percent can't even begin really until handsets based on its next-generation mobile platform start to ship. Introduced in February, PalmSource expects to release the ALP/MAX (the interface component) software development kit to software developers and hardware vendors by the end of 2006. ALP devices aren't due until later in 2007.

And it still isn't clear if the company, Palm, Inc., that accounts for most of the Palm OS's current 4 percent share will be on board for ALP or is, perhaps, creating one of its own.

Palm did recently say to PDAStreet that the company is collaborating with PalmSource on developing a new OS with a Linux kernel, however. At the same time Palm revealed PalmSource failed to meet certain milestones in an agreement to renew the Palm OS license relieving Palm of its obligation to make minimum royalty payments after this year.

Palm's newest Palm OS device is the well-received Treo 700p smartphone. But its next European handset will use Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, however.

Thanks mostly to its NetFront web browser, popular in Japan and Asia, but not that well known in Europe and the U.S., ACCESS holds about 10 percent of the overall mobile phone applications market. Kamada said it would like to increase that number to 30 percent over the next three and half years by building up sales tenfold.

ACCESS views the bundling of its mobile OS with NetFront as key to its future success. It also wants to expand PalmSource's mobile platform beyond its stronghold of North America, where most Palm OS devices are sold, further into international markets.

"Mobile phones are becoming very complicated devices, and in order to meet customers' requirements, total integrated solutions are becoming very important," Kamada said to the Tribune. "Acquiring PalmSource allows us to do this and also allows us to cover all the important markets - the U.S., Europe, Japan and China. Integration costs for the handset makers are heavy, so if they can go to a one-stop shop they are happy to work with one company."

There are those, however, who view bundling as not necessarily the best way to go for ACCESS.

"Trying to sell a fixed package of a browser and an operating system gives the mobile phone companies less flexibility because they might like one product but not the other," explained Informa principal analyst Malik Saadi to the Tribune. "NetFront is doing very well in Japan and Asia, but it is not popular in North America and Europe, so if Access bundles the products together, users and operators in those regions may reject the operating system because they don't want the browser."

ACCESS seems to want to emulate Microsoft - no stranger to bundling applications with its Windows Mobile platform - the company it views as its chief competiter. The Japanese firm doesn't have Redmond's clout or dollars behind it, however. Even with its monetary might and control of the desktop it took Microsoft a long time to get where it is today on the handset. And it still trails Symbian by a 5 to 1 margin.