Pre fever's in the air, yes, but beneath the elation and excitement of Palm's mega-launch, there's a cold, hard reality: bills are piling up. To that end, the company is looking to queue up a "secondary offering" of its stock to the tune of 18.5 million shares, which -- thanks to a nice bump in value since the Pre's announcement -- should rake in over $100 million in capital. Some $49 million of that would be used to
repay part owner Elevation Partners, while the rest would be funneled directly into Pre launch activities and future product development. Palm wants to wait until market conditions are just right for the offering to take place, but it'd like to have the stock sale wrapped up by the 31st; look for a hands-on from us shortly thereafter.
posted Mar 9th 2009 7:02PM
Nothing is a success till someone/thing buys it.
I'll buy stock just so that I can help the pre get release quicker!
WHAT?? Jesus/Bono uses money??? Next time you are going to tell me he is just a phony opportunist and then I will go crazy...
I would too if I were them. The stock hasn't been this high in a while.
dude! i just figured it out! Bono is Robin Williams!
Poor Palm, all those promised eggs, just the one basket. . . . .
Excuse my ignorance, but what the hell does Bono have to do with this?
Elevation Partners is a private equity firm which has invested in Palm.
Bono is one of the co-founders of EP.
Shi*ty economy all around.
Good luck to them and their employees. America doesn't need any more companies going under.
America. Fuck yeah.
and yet, Palm, who has done nothing for the last 15 years, is so perfectly suited to be flushed down the crapper.
With BB, iPhone and Android, we really don't need these wannabes hangin around.
Yea, it would suck if Bono lost a ton of money on this, but hey, get it line.
A hands-on of the Pre shortly after the 31st or did I misread?
A hands-on with the new stock, not a Pre. Sorry to get your hopes up!
Oops. While Joe Public will not be too aware that Palm are in debt, corporate customers may be, so this could deter the purchase of Pre in bulk by Huge Co, Inc. (Unless such an order is so large, it pays off said debt!) Secondly, beyond any possible multitouch patent issues, a potential threat to the whole Pre platform is the fact that it would not be too hard to code an app for the iPhone, Android and even Symbian that emulates much of the Pre's more innovative yet unpatented functionality such as the cool organiser and swiping gestures. With regard to the iPhone in particular, the incredible power of that device (as proven by some of the recent games/apps such as iDracular, Zen Bound, Aqua Moto, FastLane, X-Plane and other 2 & 3D masterpieces) coupled with the iPhone's proven net centric architecture could burst Palm's bubble. And that's before any 3rd generation device Apple may or may not divulge in June-ish. There are more issues too, but being a major fan of the way Palm did things in the past before they got distracted, I don't want to be so down on them because they can be exceptionally innovative and thoughtul.
All said, as more content and apps move to the cloud, and 4G/LTE begin to seep into our lives, it's the hardware (CPU etc), industrial design and connectivity options that are going to matter, not so much the OS. And that means no device manufacturer is safe unless they have some market practical rock solid patents. Place your bets.
Ok fellow Engadgeteers, you are now cleared to discuss/rant/flame/vent at will!
1 Basket
Full of Eggs
you're a few eggs short of a basket
They wouldn't need to do this if it was released a few months ago on AT&T.
How odd that after all that collaboration with Apple (the only band to ever get their own iPod!), the band makes a huge investment in Palm, and then has RIM finance their new tour.
Conflict of interest?
Good point, it would seem he is sleeping around with all the big boys.
We can forget about a [PRODUCT]Red iPhone now...
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/09/u2_jumps_ship_from_apple_to_research_in_motion.html
That is one of my favorite movies and soundtracks of all time.
A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, "plate," or "shrimp," or "plate o' shrimp" out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.
I'm saying it now,mark my words ,"no iphonekillere here!!""
Come on secret to global succes is to have right partnership n formula. Freakin scroungin for money is not gonna take em far. Pre was shot while in the womb,like scene from watchmen. Back in September of 2006 , Cingular/att showed they had balls by droppin millions a iPhone which was rejected by verizon . Those balls paid off n forever revolutionized cells on a global scale!! Step up to the plate already sprint,show some balls.,.
IRTA Palm management/board thinks the Pre will bomb, so they better get some money out of the sucks before the shit hits the fan! Else why not wait until after its a big hit?
My first Palm was a Palm III and I loved it. I referred to it several times a day for information. I even wrote a couple Palm apps. Then I paid extra a fortune to get one of the first Palm V's and I loved it. The next year I bought one of Sony's PalmOS devices and love it. I bought several different Palm Tungstens over the years and loved each one. I had a couple Treos but missed the big 480x320 display on the Tungstens. And now I have a Palm Tungsten TX and I love it. I also have an iPhone and I like the iPhone; I don't love it but I like it. I love it's screen. I wish my Tungsten had the bright high-contrast screen of the iPhone.
I worked for Palm for 2007. I suggested to management that they add cell phone capability to the Tungsten TX. I got to use the Palm Foleo (one of the first real netbooks with 11 hours of battery life) before Palm canned it. I got to see the early development of the Pre. I suggested to management that the Pre needed to run existing PalmOS apps (in an emulation layer) until new apps written for the new OS flourished. Jeff Hawkins who invented the handheld Palm in the first place and was the driver behind the PalmOS product line had put a lot of heart and sweat into the Palm handheld line and the Foleo. Jeff stopped really participating at Palm after Palm management canned the Foleo. The management of Palm seemed to me to no longer respect the engineers who built and designed the devices; they seem to care more about protecting each others butt and pimping the brand name of Palm. By the end of 2007 the engineering teams had been decimated. Palm really no longer had the engineering talent left to even rev their existing product lines and I saw several phones canned. The management of Palm were no longer technologists, they had become politicians.
Enter Elevation Partners, buying a large chunk of Palm, bringing in a new engineering group to build the Pre and hoping to rescue Palm. I wish them well. But with iPhone, the G1, the Storm, and many other competitors it's going to be an uphill struggle to regain market share.