Is Palm up for sale?
By Peter Rojas 
posted Feb 19th 2007 5:55PM
posted Feb 19th 2007 5:55PM
Is Palm up for sale? There's been no official word from Ed Colligan and crew, but shares of the company jumped last week on speculation that they were quietly prepping themselves for acquisition. We've heard merger rumors before -- there was some half-baked chatter back in the day that RIM was after 'em -- and it does seem like Palm is at a crossroads. The future of its two OS strategy is murky at best, and while the Treo has been doing fairly well here in the US, they've definitely had trouble getting traction abroad and have seemed flat-footed in the face of stiffening competition from HTC, Nokia, Samsung, RIM, and Motorola (not to mention the looming threat of the iPhone, which threatens to peel off a good number of the prosumers and enthusiasts that were once Palm's bread and butter). Of course, all this has us wondering who would actually plunk down $1.6 billion to buy Palm. Main candidates are said to include both Motorola and Nokia, but Moto already seems to be doing just fine with the Q, and to be honest, it's hard to imagine Nokia snapping up a company that puts out phones running on Windows Mobile. [Via the::unwired]
a possible buyer: HTC?
-they've got the cash
-they could use a recognizable brand name in North America
-they already build the Palms
i dont care who owns it, i want someone to release a new updated palm os.
JD - Toilet paper is very useful and is used every day. At least you didn't it was crap.
Greg - Your best bet would be to develop it yourself. It's been 3 years since their last OS (a lifetime in technology circles) and if they can't even figure out how to get past 16 categories it couldn't be that hard to pull off especially given the amount of software made to run on it goes into the tens of thousands.
The most important question here is will the buyer actually release an update for the 700p firmware
ACCESS could buy it.
Hah! Now that would be funny.
That'll teach me to go against the Microsoft Empire... I wonder what my Tungsten will fetch on eBay?
well if theyre as much paying for the products and company as theyre paying for the brand name. consider the technologies that motorola and nokia have at their disposal with palm brand, they can continue making their own smartphones but also integrate the same parts and technologies over at palm, saving money in the process while hopefully putting out competitive products.
Palm could be bought out but what can't is all the hours of contribution faithful users have put into a company that seems to take its early success for granted.
I don't find it that surprising that they could be bought out as much as how quickly they sold out when they had the opportunity. The Zen of Palm or the Cult of Mac. 2 case studies of divergent paths. They both sought to give you everything in the Palm of your hands. The result? It sounds like the sound of one hand empty and a whole new world beginning with the bite of an Apple.
Who are Palm?
At this point the only thing Palm is good for is toilet paper.
omgsplosion i just bought a palm tungsten TX, i hope thayy dont go under without allowing me to put Windows mobile 6 or atleast ALP on it!
Sometimes people's blatant stupidity amazes me...
What do you mean by 16 categories? You've sparked my curiosity :p.
palm is a really bad company which makes defective products. they also charge a ridiculous amount for customer service $2o feakin bucks.if they charge that much they may as well get a 900 number. if palm is bought maybe the buyer will put a truly needed brain into the company.
MS could buy Palm with spare change and incorporate the UI improvements they've made into WM7. Gates certainly needs some folks who know a little about UI.
Maybe Apple will buy them and give all Palm OS users a free iPhone for their years of pain and suffering.
As a long-time palm user, I've become disgusted with the company and I would love to see someone with an idea how to make a pda/smartphone buy it. Palm OS is their bread-and-butter. If they go with an all windows-mobile aproach, they'll just end up falling by the wayside with all the other manufacturers.
PalmOS has a simple interface and is compact and light weight... but goddamnit will they PLEASE update it to something that is more in line with the current generation of mobile OS's? It would be a shame to see it die, considering all the software out there. But if they don't come up with an OS that supports stuff like USB OTG, video telephony, Flash animations, multitasking ect ect... then they are dead... if they aren't already
google might buy Palm to have rights to BeOS and components related...
a little too late... in a few months, we will be looking at a pile of bones in silicon valley.
Palm reminds me of TiVo, which should have been sold long long time ago, returned some values to investors before core technology becomes worthless.
Who cares there OS crashes a lot!
No way Palm is worth $1.6 billion! Then again rumor has that there are auto companies interested in buying Chrysler. This demonstrates that companies will buy each other at vastly inflated prices.
Well since I've never known them to release a software update, or even fix bugs...I'm not real broken up about this.
Maybe some new ownership would do them good. Clean out whatever engineers are dragging their feet on developing a new OS.
But who would want it?
It's an overpriced heap of outdated junk.
Palm are worth maybe $100m, tops. They're a technological joke - even an embarassment. "How not to run a company".
As has been posted previously, leave it another month or two and the quoted companies will be able to pick up Palm in a fire sale, but will they really be interested? What on Earth does Palm bring to the table? A first class operating system? Errr no, God no! A first class GUI? Errr no, not really - the GUI is truly dated through lack of updates.
Maybe the Palm assets are in the people? Obviously not, judging by their total lack of output over the last 3 to 4 years. The management truly suck, given that they couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag, and haven't succeeded in drawing up a coherent technological roadmap since the dot com crash.
Palm - a first class joke of a firm.
Is Palm the new Atari/Commodore for the 21st century? Maybe they should get Jack Tramiel to run the firm (into the ground).
$1.6 Billion - hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Terrible waste. A great product screwed up by half-witted business decisions.
I love the simplicity of the OS and would like to upgrade from my current Tungsten T3. However, until they finally get v6 - or whatever it is called now - out of the door in decent shape there is no way I will do that.
You people are f'ing morons. This article is about Palm the HARDWARE maker, which no longer makes Palm OS. The only relationship is that Palm USES the former Palm OS in some of their handhelds. That's it. I am shocked that in 26 comments, no one has pointed this out.
Palm doesn't make hardware - they outsource everything (design & manufacture) to HTC, you f'ing moron.
Palm is a company bereft of ideas, technologically bankrupt.
They have no assets. Zero. Zip. Nada. Except perhaps their very generous licence to the antiquated Garnet (that's software, by the way) - I'd give them $2 for that, double if they throw in the coffee maker.
Haha. I like the title. Is "Palm up" for sale? Makes you wonder.
Probably most of the above mentioned phone makers will not be interested in Palm. In this fixed-mobile convergence, enterprise mobility age, it would not surprise me if a company like HP or Dell might be interested in Palm brand. Remember HP bought BitPhone (mobile device management software vendor), and then turn around and sell complete enterprise solution.
DIE PALM, DIE!!!
I feel bad for palm, they have no future. They sold their software company because it was lagging, then they released the competitors OS, then bought the laggy OS back (yeah, the one they were trying to get away from) and to top it off, they have HTC make their handhelds... what do they have to offer anyone any more? It would be cool if dell or Google bought them out... more google than dell so Google can go 3G crazy while embedding their services and they have the horsepower to come up with a good OS, not to mention they have the brand name.
If anyone could compete with Apple and their consumer iPhone, it would be a gdevice.