Palm is not dead, yet. Granted they only have maybe a year left without a major cash infusion or major overhaul, but they aren’t exactly having a fire sale just yet. When large corporations start to lose buoyancy in the financial district, they start looking for investment “partners”. Usually a partnership allows the failing company to continue its planned operations while guaranteeing xx% of the overall profits from operations to the lender. From my understanding, Palm is trying to partner with a company that can help them survive yet allow them to focus development of WebOS and Palm branded smart phones. This is why companies like HTC, Lenovo, Dell and others have rejected offers. Competing companies would rather eliminate the company altogether with a purchase than invest in a company that competes with their products. As time goes on and Palm does not regain buoyancy, I think you will see a little more desperate approach on Palm’s part. I think you will see them willingly licensing their OS to hardware developers and/or completely turning over all operations for the right price. When this happens, you will see a lot more interest from companies that want to purchase them for their intellectual property and to eliminate them from the equation.
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Palm is not dead, yet. Granted they only have maybe a year left without a major cash infusion or major overhaul, but they aren’t exactly having a fire sale just yet. When large corporations start to lose buoyancy in the financial district, they start looking for investment “partners”. Usually a partnership allows the failing company to continue its planned operations while guaranteeing xx% of the overall profits from operations to the lender. From my understanding, Palm is trying to partner with a company that can help them survive yet allow them to focus development of WebOS and Palm branded smart phones. This is why companies like HTC, Lenovo, Dell and others have rejected offers. Competing companies would rather eliminate the company altogether with a purchase than invest in a company that competes with their products. As time goes on and Palm does not regain buoyancy, I think you will see a little more desperate approach on Palm’s part. I think you will see them willingly licensing their OS to hardware developers and/or completely turning over all operations for the right price. When this happens, you will see a lot more interest from companies that want to purchase them for their intellectual property and to eliminate them from the equation.