http://www.precentral.net/fyi-pre-reports-your-location-palm
When PreCentral's people asked Palm about this, their official statement to them in part was:
Our goal has been to follow industry best practices on data collection, use, and encryption. Like most EULAs and privacy policies, though, the terms tend to get pretty detailed about potential scenarios. And because the terms are meant to notify users about all possible variations, we wanted to err on the side of over notifying rather than under notifying users through the terms of use. So there's really nothing here "beyond the norm" for a EULA or privacy policy.
The provision you've quoted explains why Palm might collect user information. For example, we collect and transmit users' email addresses, email content, contact lists, etc. to provide WebOS services such as back-up and restore for the purpose of backing up that data and helping users restore the data if needed (in that case, it would not be limited to just the email address collected at registration). If users someday make purchases on their device through the Apps Catalog, then we would also collect payment information to process the transaction.
At all times, we'd be strictly bound by our privacy policy. Our privacy policy, like virtually all others in the industry, contemplate our using data to provide services users have requested, improve our products and services (hence the reference to Palm's own "sales and marketing" in the privacy policy), troubleshoot, etc. We also refer to affiliates because Palm is a global company, and we may need to transmit data from our European subsidiary to the parent company. We're obviously not a conglomerate with many different subs and affiliates, but the terms specifically mention subs and affiliates so that we can comply with European data protection laws that require us to spell out that data collected by a European sub can be transmitted to another part of the company.