HP announced today that it will be dropping the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system on future versions of it’s popular iPAQ handheld computer line. By 2005 all iPAQ personal digital assistants sold by HP will be running a customized version of Palm’s latest “Cobalt” operating system.

“We’ve realized that the Palm operating system offers superior multi-tasking, memory managment, and multimedia features which are important to bring our iPAQ PDAs to the next level in mobile computing.” says James Robinson, HP’s chief technology officer. “Our research indicates that consumers demand a high degree of flexibility in their mobile computers while retaining robust stability and ease-of-use. The Windows Mobile platform is just not flexible enough in terms of hardware capabilities and applications support.”

HP also intends to release a series of extremely small credit card sized iPAQs with greyscale screens running the Palm OS. “The Palm OS offers a much simpler user interface important for monochrome screens.” says Robinson.