Ever since we heard about Palm’s plans to acquire the assets of Be, famous (or infamous, depending your your perpective) makers of the BeOS, we’ve been quite curious about the reasoning. We asked Marlene Somsak, senior director of corporate communications at Palm, Inc. to give us some insight into their thinking. Here’s what she told us (and it makes good sense):

First, just to clarify, we didn’t announce plans to buy Be. We’re just planning to buy some of the assets–the IP [intellectual property], Internet tools, multimedia technology, etc. Plus, we have the opportunity to attract a contiguous group of people who have worked well together on the BeOS, who are productive and cohesive, and who can help us advance the Palm OS into the important adjacent areas we’ve long spoken about–smartphones and communicators, to name a few. And these people share our design philosophy of a fast, sleek OS that delivers great performance on a small base.

Expect Palm to remain true to its strategy and to evolve it wisely over time. The asset acquisition we announced is all about Palm OS and working to maintain the market leadership the Palm OS has today in the handheld industry. Be developed some very strong multimedia and Internet-related tools and technologies. We can provide greater service to our customers when we buy the technology than if we develop it from the inside, which could take longer.