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Bloomberg Reports That Palm Is Up For Sale
leetrout writes with this excerpt from a story at Bloomberg News "Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, put itself up for sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation."
I'd buy that for a dollar!
AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.
Hopefully whoever buys them does something with it, or sells it to someone who will.
To expand on your point; Google lacks a great deal of intellectual property that puts them at legal risk from competitors such as RIM and Apple when it comes to their Android OS. A Google acquisition would spell a quick end to the HTC vs. Apple suit. On the other hand, if RIM, Apple, or Nokia acquires Palm, we can say hello to a torrent of lawsuits directed at every aspect of their respective smartphone manufacturing competitors.
As an aside, I don't think it would be bad if Microsoft purchased Palm, since Microsoft's smartphone IP is shallow at best. I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up that could cut it with iPhone OS or Android, and I don't think that WM 7 is going to do it.
One of their original flagship 'Pilot 5000' is my first PDA, and people can see the immense potential in it - a lightweight programmable widget. Few months after its first launch a guy called Adams set up a website to share homebrew Pilot's applications and games around the world, the era of Palm had since begun. (Regardless of million hits daily, Adams fold his website after marriage, by his wife's order. He should really regret it by now)
Palm was actually doing good until one day some pinheads in the management decided that sales is more important than technology advancement. It's amazing to see history repeated itself over and over again in tech world.
Another good line of products ruined by great management decision. Sad, really sad.
I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up
No thanks, I had enough with the pop ups on their desktop OS.
I'd say it looks better than iPhone OS, and that says something. I hope HTC (or Lenovo, or someone else competent) buys them (and their substantial patent portfolio) and makes an iPad competitor based on WebOS, just to piss off Apple. Steve Jobs will be livid -- any lawsuit will only bring an equal and opposite countersuit, and the software is Apple quality (indeed, much of it was written by ex-Apple engineers and designed by ex-Apple designers), which makes it twice as painful.
Not compelling enough? Quick: name two smartphones that have a touchscreen AND a physical keyboard on one surface, with no (other) moving parts. The Pre may not be a godsend, but the Pixi certainly is.
I have the Pixi Plus with Verizon service. Other than battery life (which is a well-documented issue that has several acceptable solutions), I cannot find a SINGLE thing I don't love about it.
It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's. As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans. For someone who doesn't carry a purse, that is a huge factor.
One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone presently can't run more than one, and reviewers worship it.) So people buy the Pre, and then aren't happy with it because the form factor is annoying and the keyboard is unusable (and because they expect their battery to last three days while they watch videos over Wi-Fi). And Palm gets a bad rap, even though they make a device that people would fall in love en masse with if they weren't talked out of giving it half a chance.
To each his own, but for me Palm offers a product that nothing else today can compete with. I really hope the market gives them a fair shake before letting their technology fade away.
That's a shame, the Palm Pre really is a nice phone, I prefer it to the iPhone. WebOS is nicer, and the native SDK is out now. The browsing experience was comparable when I compared iphone to pre. And it has a real keyboard that pops out. They totally blew the ads though, those horrible TV ads w/the weird chick going "oh wait, I just did that" - most likely alienated many potential customers. I know the freaked me out.
I live in a rich country in Europe. Palm will not take my money to buy a Pre, over a year after its introduction.
I hope Palm will serve as an example to companies: If you introduce a product whose sales are uncertain, you need to sell it worldwide as soon as possible, otherwise you are just turning down peoples money.
Palm: Great Engineers, Rubbish Marketeers.
No feedback to give. I just saw all the *rats and had to say hi.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
I thought the band U2 had a stake in Palm?
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
now i dont know jack about the palm-pre of web-os, but since when do you NEED an app store on a proper smartphone? The iphone might have triggered android in hopping onto the "app-store" bandwagon, and with all the ipad-hoopla, the media might make you think that without an app-store you cant do anything, but a proper smart-phone should be able to have software installed which isnt given the official X seal of approval.
My 3 year old nokia doesnt have an app-store (come to think of it, it has the n-gage thing for games), but i still managed to get opera installed... or just about any piece of java code i write.
I thought the entire point of smart-phones was that they grew closer and closer to a general purpose computer, not being a walled-garden
People, what a bunch of bastards
Then HTC should buy out Nokia to combine great touchscreen hardware with a solid/cool/functional platform, and then LG should buy out HTC and put cool blinking lights and win back the teenage girl market. But by then the phone would have lost their business market so they would have to spin off their business-oriented smart phone division (formerly Blackberry). Of course, former Nokia employees would be pissed that LG is creating flip phones and using touchscreens so they all rage quit and form their own phone company that focuses on simple-to-use candy-bar and slider phones. Also because of the flip phone format, touchscreen user-friendliness would be rendered nearly useless, so LG would spin off their touch division (formerly HTC).
Are we done speculating now?
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it."
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
BeOS is dead for a reason.
Yes, and the reason is: Microsoft bullied PC makers so they would not sell computers with any other OS. See here.
People hate Microsoft for a reason.
Circumcision is child abuse.
HTC would own Palm's IP, which appears to be strong enough to ward off Apple - as Apple are suing HTC for features in Android (huh?) currently, this would both strengthen their hand with Apple, and with Google and the Open Handset Alliance, and also give them a choice of going HTC-WebOS, using Android, or Windows Phone 7 (which now you can't skin it removes HTC's Sense UI)
No, that would be ACCESS who own the BeOS code base and who have already blessed the Haiku developers with permission to distribute the BeBook and other assorted documentation. The BeOS code is safe. The Haiku clean room implementation will make it easier to modernize the base for R2 once full BeOS compatibility is reached.
--bornagainpenguin
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