Is Palm 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]
I've been expecting this. Palm has been limping along for God knows how long. No true breakthrough products for at least 2 years. Products virtually unchanged for that long. Doesn't have the resources to make their legacy products (e.g., USB Connect) work correctly with XP, etc. Sold Palm-OS (="desperate for cash"), buy it back, whatever. When they launched the 680, they made the point that they're aiming at the "world" market (i.e., it's over for them in the US). Unless they have a slimmer, slicker product up their sleeve, iPhone is the coup-de-grace.
Here is an analysis of Should Dell Acquire Palm? http://sramanamitra.com/blog/642