Nokia rumored to be eyeing Palm buy yet again
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Nov 13th 2009 4:28PM
posted Nov 13th 2009 4:28PM
We've been around this rumor pretty much since Palm started looking competitive again, so take it for what you will -- but a bunch of fat cats down on Wall Street have been going ape today over renewed "chatter" that Nokia might be taking an interest in acquiring Palm. Palm's share prices are up well over 5 percent on the day, though we wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there was some behind-the-scenes manipulation going on here -- an acquisition would make less sense now than ever with suitors on the hook for $2 billion or more, a hefty sum even for a giant like Nokia, never mind the fact that they've still got two smartphone platforms of their own in the mix. Licensing webOS is being floated as a possible alternative to an outright Palm purchase -- but we're having such an exceedingly difficult time picturing a 5800 running webOS that we'll put this one on ice until we get the joint press release.
If this were to happen, they'd both get a taste of my Bankai.
for all those who don't know
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORgiEsMEaAo
But you don't even know your swords name yet.
@OneLove yes i do plus the name is stated during transformation
NoPalm sounds better than PalmKia! After all, Palm is going to fold
with or without a buyer regardless.
What's Palm?
Really, is that all you got?
You see that word highlited in blue? Yeah, the one that reads Palm? Click on it. It will explain your question.
Now let the aduts converse.
If you're going to correct him at least spell "adult" correctly!
*face palm*
*face palm/nokia*
Could this be the equivocal of Sprint purchasing Nextel??? (Nokia, a current leader, purchasing Palm).
DAMN IT CHAD YOU BEAT ME TO IT!!!
I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL!!! :p
I wonder though, would Nokia continue its new MAEMO OS or would they just use WEB OS, or both??? MAEMO looks pretty interesting, it multi-tasks pretty well, so does the WEB OS. Maybe this is a step they're willing to take considering the trends in wireless lately. Multi-tasking is in more demand, and Nokia's been losing out a lot as by their latest earnings. Blackberry is crawling up gaining share, and the sheep of Apple come to flock around, and Android is gaining ground and fast. So I guess this move makes some sense, and if it goes through, then we will see if it was worth the gamble and risk. But Web OS has a positive outlook. Then again, this could all just be hot air going around and nothing more than just rumors of the likes of T-Mobile acquiring Sprint.
-Jim Rome
@Brian
Sorry, mistype.
*adults
Why can't Nokia just update Symbian? I have a Nokia E71, and the actual phone is robustly constructed and the parts are superior. Symbian just looks a little lousy, even though it is very fast. Why buy out a whole company when you have everything you need already?
Have you been living under a rock?
Why invest millions if not billions to fix their junk when they can just acquire an OS that is on par with anything else out there. Plus palm has always wanted an avenue into the US market which palm would provide.
The Symbian codebase is ancient, based on EPOC 32 from a over decade a go (remember Psion?). As others have said, the work to overhaul it just wouldn't be cost effective.
@aaron
Nokia (or Symbian Foundation) has been "fixing" Symbian for at least couple of years now...
And WebOS on par with everything else? The only thing WebOS is on par with anything else is hype coming from the US. WebOS is just as dead as Palm is. Only "real" way to develop apps is HTML+CSS+JS which just isn't enough, software stacks and APIs underneath aren't good enough for games etc.
And Palm's "plastic-bubble" design is btw. ugly as hell.
@eric
"ugly as hell". Please, do tell us more about your fashion sense, since you seem to be the authority on it.
Agreed the E71 was a wonderful phone. Nokia makes excellent hardware, but software, not so much.
@ Eric: sure the developers are stuck with HTML+CSS+JS, or basic web app stuff right NOW, but that's where the iPhone was when it started out. There's no technical reason it can't be opened up. That's a purely business decision.
As for 'US hype' that's nonsense. webOS is a good, modern OS hampered by the lack of 3rd party devs (partly because of above said business decision, partly because of the limited number of carriers). Thinning out the over crowded smartphone OS space would be nice...
http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=2236
There's too many OSes out there right now, and despite Symbian's dominance (which is slipping), ditching it for webOS going forward and knifing their current babies would probably make GREAT business sense for Nokia. Consolidate the platform, open up the API more for devs, and get the kind of distribution that Nokia can given its worldwide market leader status.
I like the idea personally.
I really do doubt this, but I have actually suggested that Nokia develop something similar. I hate to say it, but even Steve Jobs knows that the future is web applications. The market felt otherwise, because as we can see, the networks blow to high heaven. Future networks — 2 years or more out — are going to have to be better.
Most importantly, Palm has proven that the WebOS can scale downward. This is critical. Nokia needs an end-to-end web-focused OS, and the need it yesterday. The N900 is cool, but isn’t going to be that popular without significant simplification. Symbian, as others have noted has taken forever to get here, whatever that is! Nokia could have had a NetBook after EPOC was acquired and turned into Symbian.
This would be a smart move if they could get new devices built fast — less than 12 months. Nokia would need to have a free device by the end of 2010 based on the WebOS. If they can, Palm is worth a hell of a lot more than $2B to Nokia.
This keeps on coming up but is just as likely as T-Mobile acquiring Sprint...
What does Nokia have to gain?
-It's not a lack of OS (Symbian^2, ^3, and ^4 are all being developed in some capacity).
-It's not direct technology from WebOS (Symbian's widget system seems similar to WebOS 'programs')
-Maybe IP rights?
WebOS is built on Linux... so maybe something to do with Maemo?
A purchase like this does absolutely nothing to strengthen Nokia's position in the industry, IMHO
@Alan Strangis
Okay, webOS is a good, modern OS. And in future it might also have other options than HTML+CSS+JS combo. In future cows may also fly. Nokia has been putting _shitloads_ of money to Symbian. Symbian has very clear roadmap. Nokia has very clear roadmap when it comes to device platform: Qt everywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac, Symbian, WinMo). Of course Nokia could merge their Linux development with webOS if they would buy Palm. But if they would buy Palm, it would be because Nokia needs capable people. Nokia doesn't need webOS which might be something in the future. Nokia has already something that will be something in the future: Symbian.
And that webOS hype is primarily all coming from the US. Fact. Palm has been dead for 10 years everywhere else, even in the UK. webOS is primarily hampered by the fact that Palm is basically dead and it has no future as a global company.
People don't realise the reasons why Symbian marketshare is "slipping". It is because it has problems, yes. But the most important thing to notice, is that Nokia/Symbian is completely aware of the problems and it has been fixing them for a couple of years now! Nokia has also been consolidating their platforms for few years now: did anyone notice how Trolltech (nowadays Qt by Nokia) was already bringing Qt to Symbian even before Nokia bought them? Has anyone noticed how Nokia has been quiet about really new Symbian products? They have released "something" just because they have to release "something", all efforts have been in future for couple of years! That is why N97 sucks: they didn't even try to make it excellent (and honestly it's surprisingly good considering the situation), they just needed something so that people would have something to buy from Nokia.
"Open up the API", it's not the APIs. There are already APIs. The ugly fact is that those APIs are nonusable, they're broken for games development because they were partly badly designed. Fixing them will take time and bringing the real programming languages to the mix is another problem: it will take years (I have no idea if this is W-I-P). Nokia does not want OS which needs fixing, they already have Symbian.
At this stage you're all very much mistaken if you think that web applications could become some sort of solution. Atm. they are alright as a widgets etc. but total NO-GO to all serious business (games, etc.). The biggest reason why web apps are so IN atm. is Google. Google gets its money from ads. Ads are in Google's web apps. Surprisingly Google thinks that services and web apps is the way to go. I would think so too, if I had millions of users in my services and each of them would mean millions of dollars of profit for me.
Web apps might be a solution in a future when all the problems are solved (speed, CPU-hogging, WebGL throughout the clients, HTML5 throughout the clients, etc. etc.). They are not solution now. GMail starts to crawl with multiple inboxes, Wave is far from usable experience even with the fastest JavaScript interpreters!
Nokia does not need new OS to "low-end" devices. They have S30. They have S40. Both excellent OS's.
Nokia does not need Palm nor would it gain anything from Palm (except resources). Palm needs somebody. And apparently Palm owners needed a little upswing to Palm stock.
And yes, as I am a fashion sensei I have to say that Palm makes ugly devices. Perhaps Hasbro would be interested.
@Paul Maddox
Yes, because the Linux kernel isn't over a decade old either...
Err... Symbian is being rewritten as versions ^2 to ^4. Do you seriously think Nokia with it's enormous R&D budget aren't developing their operating systems?
Wake the fuck up, people.
Anyway, this isn't such a bad deal - Nokia have no presence or brand recognition in the US. Palm does. This could be a good way to break back into the US market.
Eric,
I re-read the thread this morning and want to comment on your thoughts about Symbian. Symbian was a great idea when EPOC was pulled from Psion. I wrote to Nokia stating that we needed a NetBook like product that is based on mobile communications technology. That was nearly a decade ago. We keep waiting a couple of years for Symbian to deliver, and in the mean time the numbers are telling the story. Dismiss them with, but next year, but I’m a Cubs fan. Thanks anyway.
My assessment from a business perspective is that Nokia needs the same OS top to bottom. You say series 30. I say web. It won’t work for games, but since when did Nokia have a serious game focus? Nokia sells devices in every corner of the world, and needs a functional communications product. Phones are no longer sufficient. Series 60 is not going to sell going up against Android and the iPhone ever again. I wait to be proved wrong.
Development blows on Symbian. Hey it was lovely in Metrowerks on UIQ, for 2002! XCode and Eclipse with ObjC and near-Java are pretty easy to get a grasp on, and the ability to head to market — Apple aside! — are pretty damn speedy compared to everything from the past. Brew! Aaaaah.
On a side note, I picked up a guitar tuner and metronome for the iPhone last night. Why in all of these years have we not seen apps like this? And how would Symbian respond to such capabilities? How has it? It is finally about the devices doing what we want, not the carriers or device makers telling us. That is why the web is critical, as Hewitt has demonstrated lately.
@nicholas: Since when did Nokia have a serious gaming focus? How quickly we forget the N-Gage.
Oh boy I know this was coming!
thats what.....she said...
Nokia? Licensing webOS? Yea... right.
As much as you Palm nerds would like to dream, Palm is not going anywhere..
After this Pixi, they are going to get pooped on by Droid, iPhone and BB...
Web OS is poop. Could and Google devices will rape Palm of any dignity they have left.
True
What wonderful insight.
not happening
i hope!
True.
But man do I want webOS on a N97.
True. Silly rumor.
Nokia can't buy any handset manufacturer with a marketshare greater than zero, or EU and US would slap the deal silly.
What's more, this kind of deal would be absolutely silly for Nokia. It would bring absolutely nothing new to Nokia portfolio. Palm Pre, and Pixie are fine phones, but there are similar Nokia phones. And as they have different OS there would hardly be any synergy in development.
If Palm needs a white knight to bail them out they should start eyeing away from Nokia and into guys wanting to diversify into handsets. Dell and Asus would be better candidates to buy Palm. Both are trying to get into handset market and dont have much presense there yet. It would make absolutely sense for one of them to grab Palm.
Palm should join forces with RIM. They have a better operating system, whereas RIM has the whole package to justify that operating system.
I don't think WebOS has the sophistication of Blackberry OS. Plus it would be a gamble of titanic proportions for RIM to switch to WebOS.
There are some who think that Palm is actually the best BB killing option out there… But, Palm doesn’t have a lot of air if the sales numbers are bad. Nokia could have a really decent OS for not a huge amount of money. They could probably swap stock on this one for the most part and appease Elevation.
Palm isn’t going to make it on its own, but I respect the tech. They pulled off an almost iPhone quality OS fast and cost-effectively. Imagine what they could do with resources! The future is mobile web. It’s pretty weird that Apple tech could be the base of just about every major mobile web OS. Crazy.
RIM should NOT have anything to do with Palm.
@nicholas
And by Apple based tech you mean WebKit which is actually Linux based tech as it is a fork of KDE's KHTML rendering engine.
The future is in open OS's. Linux, perhaps Symbian (Symbian^4 will probably tell Symbian's final direction).
@ Eric
WebKit's roots are from KHTML but WebKit itself was created by Apple. Apple then turned WebKit into an open source project to which Apple and Google are the major contributors. Look at WebKit.org and you'll see it's logo is an Apple Safari golden compass (as opposed to the silver one in the actual Safari browser). WebKit.org itself is hosted on Macintosh servers.
So in fact it is Apple technology.
Eric,
Certainly, WebKit is based on KHTML, but is sort of similar to referring to OS X as BSD. They are both pretty far from the root. But, WebKit is Open source and is supported by Nokia. Open source is fantastic, but I doubt Symbian is getting anywhere soon. It hasn’t developed far enough since EPOC as somebody else stated, and as a developer I am really not interested.
iPhone and Android are my focus, but giving PALM some air may make a viable third path.
I hope so
Nice idea, but honestly I can't really see Nokia buying Palm. At this point it makes very little sense to go down that route. Why spend $2BN+ buying Palm and hundreds of millions more redesigning your handset portfolio to get it to work with WEBOS, when they can just invest in their existing platforms (Symbian and Maemo) and bring them up to scratch.
Palm cannot crank out the handsets quick enough, look at the surge of Android sets hitting the market and gaining market share. Palm will not be around much longer unless someone else can make better hardware. Nokia? Not sure of the fit, I don't see it happening, both companies are lacking right now in innovation.
How bout they invest that in making innovative phones that have the same flair the N95 did back in 07 and getting the OVI store together. I mean I'm buying the N900 to replace my E71, but I must admit the competition is turning on the heat with better hardware.
Nokia devices with webOS = win! that would solve everything I feel.