Janam Technologies LLC, a provider of rugged mobile computers that scan barcodes, and ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc., a member of the ACCESS CO., LTD., group of companies, today announced a licensing agreement that enables Janam to develop and sell application-specific mobile computers based on the latest version of ACCESS’ Palm OS® Garnet™ until 2011 .

In addition, Janam today announced its rugged, barcode-scanning, PDA-format mobile computers that will offer all the winning features of Palm OS Garnet, while still supporting barcode-scanning applications written for earlier versions of Palm OS.

More than 40 million Palm Powered™ mobile phones, handhelds, and other mobile devices have been sold worldwide.  With over 29,000 Palm OS application software titles available today, the Palm OS platform offers one of the largest third-party software catalogs to enable users to customize their Palm Powered smart mobile devices to fit particular needs.  

“This is a story of investment protection,” said Harry B. Lerner, Co-CEO of Janam.  “Value-added resellers and their customers who have invested millions of dollars over the last 10 years in barcode-scanning applications for the durable Palm OS platform will now have cutting-edge hardware to which they can migrate their existing applications effortlessly, while adding newer functionality that further extends their solutions.”

“ACCESS continues to be fully committed to the enterprise market,” said Kathleen Peters, vice president of licensing and sales at ACCESS Systems Americas (previously called PalmSource, Inc.).  “We are excited to work with Janam to provide enterprises running Palm OS applications in mission critical environments with new and innovative rugged mobile computers that feature the Palm OS advantage—ease-of-use, flexibility and power. By basing their new mobile devices on Palm OS, Janam is providing the enterprise customers a migration path to upgrade their hardware while preserving their investment in the Palm OS-based applications they use today.”

Janam’s XP Series rugged mobile computers combine the benefits of the Palm OS® Garnet™, including long battery life, a simple development environment and overall system stability, with the advanced technical features found in typical industrial mobile computers that run on alternative operating systems, in a much smaller and lighter package—all for up to half the list price.

The XP20 Series features a custom, “bright white”, 160 x 160, monochrome display that was developed to provide continuity with today’s Palm OS® industrial mobile computers.  The XP30 Series adds a color, quarter-VGA display and Bluetooth as standard.  All XP Series products offer a 2D barcode scanning option, meet IP54 sealing requirements, withstand drops to concrete from 4’/1.2m and weigh less than 10 ounces.

The XP Series will be the world’s first, rugged, mobile computer that combines Palm OS Garnet (version 5.4), numeric keypad option, user-accessible memory, NAND flash memory backup, USB connectivity, double capacity battery option and, in WLAN versions, WiFi Protected Access (WPA) wireless security.

With easy management of accessories in mind, Janam will also offer a single-slot charging/synching cradle, four-slot charging/synching cradle, USB synching/charging cable and attachable magnetic stripe reader (MSR) that works with all XP Series mobile computers.

The XP Series product line is expected to be commercially available by the end of this year.