TCL on Tuesday announced that it has acquired the rights to the defunct Palm mobile phone brand and plans to resurrect it in the U.S.

The Chinese consumer electronics firm said it will create a new Silicon Valley-based company, Palm Inc., that will take ownership of the Palm brand and rebuild it via "the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry."

TCL did not share a projected timeframe for the return of Palm-branded smartphones, but plans to do so at a later date.

Palm, once a popular maker of handheld organiser devices and later smartphones, was bought by H-P in a deal valuing it at US$1.2 billion in 2010. It completed the acquisition in July of that year, revealing that it would use Palm’s webOS operating system to power various new devices, including smartphones, tablets and netbooks. In the end, H-P launched a handful of devices on the platform before scaling back its consumer mobile plans. It sold the operating system to LG Electronics in 2013 but retained its underlying patents and the Palm brand.

TCL did not mention H-P in this week’s announcement, nor did it comment on the purchase price.

TCL makes primarily low-cost mobile devices, including smartphones, selling them under its own brand and as Alcatel OneTouch. It did not specify where Palm will fit into its portfolio, but it seems safe to assume that it will use the brand to further its ambitions in western markets and at higher price points.

"Today the company is adding new dimensions to its legacy hardware capabilities, turning itself into a true mobile Internet player with applications and cloud services in areas such as health care, education, smart home, video conferencing, music, etc," TCL said.

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