Microsoft's just announced that its $500M buyout of Sidekick maker Danger is complete, and that it's rolling the new team into its own unit, the Premium Mobile Experiences division. Ready to follow the chain of corporate command? PMX is under the Mobile Communications Business unit at MS, which itself falls under the Entertainment and Devices Division responsible for the Xbox and Zune. Got all that? Good. Danger's management team won't be directly calling the shots at PMX, though -- they'll be reporting to Roz Ho, who you might remember as the former head of the Mac Business Unit. Ho says the goal of PMX is to have people "smile every time they look at their phone," which hopefully means we'll be seeing a lot more Danger influence on Windows Mobile than the other way around. Still, "Premium Mobile Experiences" is an interesting choice of name, especially in the same division as the 360 and Zune -- dare we dream of a Microsoft-branded consumer phone?

[Via MocoNews]

Not even a month after we heard that Iomega was warming to a revised takeover bid from EMC, the two lovebirds have finally let their true feelings be known. Announced today, EMC is acquiring the famed Zip Drive manufacturer for $213 million. The final figure is nearly $7 million higher than the one proposed in March, and the all-cash agreement worked out to $3.85-per share -- 5.8-percent higher than Iomega's Tuesday closing price of $3.64. Also of note, Iomega will be picking up the tab on a $7.5 million termination fee to the shareholders for a canceled deal involving China's ExcelStor Group, and EMC stated that it didn't expect the acquisition to "have any material impact on its full-year earnings."

[Thanks, Khattab]

Sure, the folks in Redmond didn't get their grubby mitts on Yahoo! (yet), but at least they picked up a little something for their mobile division, namely: Danger. According to news just crossing the wires, the monolithic company has picked up the Sidekick-creators for an undisclosed amount, and will subsequently fold the phone-maker into its mobile wing. Is there a Windows Mobile version of the Hiptop in our future? Survey says yes.

We're fairly certain we haven't heard the last of this Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo! -- or Google's plans to intervene -- but it looks like round one has Yahoo! saying "no thanks" to Microsoft's $44.6 billion buyout offer. Apparently some of the number crunchers inside Yahoo! feel like the number is too low of a valuation, while others want to get tied up with Google to improve search revenues -- which some seem to think might have some antitrust implications. Pah, "antitrust implications." At least Microsoft remembers when men were men, and monopolies were monopolies.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

No surprises here, but Palm's "strategic recapitalization" effort has officially been closed. Just months after shareholders gave a collective thumbs-up to the idea (hey, who can say no to Bono?), Elevation Partners has indeed "invested $325 million in Palm, which the company will utilize along with existing cash and $400 million of new debt to finance a $9-per share cash distribution." Additionally, a number of new faces have been appointed jobs within the outfit, and the "total number of directors on the board has been increased from eight to nine." Ed Colligan, Palm's president and CEO, proclaimed that this "transaction has laid the groundwork for the firm to recapture its position as the leading innovator and brand of the mobile-computing revolution." Now that's the spirit, Ed.

[Via mocoNews]

Just one day after Nokia offered $8 billion for NAVTEQ, TomTom is in the news with a formal offer for Tele Atlas. Of course, TomTom had already announced their intent to offer €21.25 per share (about $2.56 billion) for the map maker back in July -- the same amount tendered today. Back then the offer represented a sweet 32% premium over the average Tele Atlas share price. However, Tele Atlas is now trading above the offer price thanks to speculation caused by the Nokia deal. We say hold out for more Tele Atlas. Just hint at discussions with Nokia or Garmin and we're pretty sure TomTom will up the ante.

[Thanks, SmartDust]

At this point we didn't know anyone still had strong feelings for Gateway, but never discount the power of cash to get those hearts a-beating: unhappy with the $710M Acer's paying for the company, two different groups of Gateway shareholders have filed suit, alleging that company executives should have held out for more scratch. Acer was planning using the Gateway acquisition to greatly expand its US presence, so it should be interesting to see how both companies react to these lawsuits -- and how much those shareholders thought Gateway was actually worth.

A completely unsubstantiated rumor floating among day traders has RIM stock up a pretty penny today, suggesting that Microsoft may be looking to acquire Waterloo's finest in response to Google's meddling in the mobile space. At this point, pundits seem to be merely saying that it "makes sense," not that they've actually caught wind of anything substantial -- but we're kinda hoping Microsoft doesn't get any ideas here. We're not seeing Microsoft pushing a non-Windows Mobile based platform onto licensees any time soon -- particularly one that relies as heavily on Java as the BlackBerry OS does -- and a BlackBerry-branded device running Windows Mobile makes about as much sense as a Mac running Wind... oh, wait.

[Via BloggingBuyouts]

It's been a busy day for tech acquisitions: first, Acer ponied up to acquire Gateway, which in turn was rumored to be interested in Packard Bell, and now we're hearing rumors that Quanta and Hon Hai, two of the biggest device manufacturers around, are ready to tie the knot. The rumor's actually been floating around for a while -- long enough for Hon Hai to have denied it several times -- but Quanta's CEO, Michael Wang, resigned over the weekend, in part because he disagreed with the acquisition plan. Hon Hai (also known as FoxConn) is probably best known for manufacturing the iPod, but the company isn't particularly strong in the laptop segment, where Quanta is the clear leader. Nothing's been announced yet, but it's a dramatic time in the Asian ODM world -- stay tuned.

[Via BloggingStocks]

Just because you haven't heard a peep from thin clients in what seems like ages (the SafeBook notwithstanding), that doesn't mean that the business has keeled over, and apparently, HP believes there's still profits to be found. In a recently announced deal, HP has agreed to buy thin client computing company Neoware in a $334 million deal, and is reportedly hoping that the purchase will "increase the growth of its thin client computing business and augment its Linux software, client virtualization, and customization abilities." HP is supposedly looking to put Neoware in its business desktop unit, and while no further details were mentioned in regard to actual product releases, we should be hearing a lot more about all of this when the deal officially closes in Q4.

[Via LinuxDevices]

Don't feel bad if you've never heard of Flextronics, Solectron or both -- we polled our mom on the subject, and she asked when we were going to give up this "blogging nonsense" for a real job -- but these two fairly low-profile contract electronics manufacturers churn out massive amounts of product for other little companies you might have heard of: like HP, Dell, Sony, Ericsson, Cisco, Motorola and Microsoft. Now Flextronics is ending this bitter rivalry in a Coke buys Pepsi-type shocker, forking over $3.6 billion in cash and stock for Solectron. Flextronics will operate Solectron as a subsidiary, and claims the purchase will help it expand scale and market reach, while saving on costs, with the deal to add about 15 percent to earnings, claims the manufacturer.

Continuing their skyrocket beyond ODM-dom, HTC's buyout bid for Taiwanese Dopod has moved into the final stages. Having signed a memorandum of understanding, the only thing left in the estimated $150 million deal is approval from the Taiwanese government. Assuming HTC chairwoman and Dopod controlling shareholder Cher Wang, daughter of petrochemicals billionaire Y.C. Wang and wife of HTC boss-man Peter Chou, has enough influence to push this through (read: she does), then HTC is about to find themselves in direct competition with their own customers O2, i-mate and HP. HTC already confirmed their decision to self-brand phones in Europe, now the Dopod deal could result in HTC designs being sold exclusively under the Dopod branding outside of Europe. In fact, HTC has already cut ties with both O2 and i-mate in Australia, New Zealand, and India. So if Dopod's claim that HTC manufactures 80 percent of Windows Mobile phones is true, well, O2, i-mate, and HP best be looking for fresh design and manufacturing blood on the quick.

[Thanks, Ash]