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HTC Walks From Palm Bid, Will Lenovo Step Up?
MojoKid writes "Earlier in the month, it was reported that Palm was being shopped around. At that time, two of the main potential suitors were HTC and Lenovo. HTC obviously felt like the best fit. Lately, HTC has shown that it has a penchant for creating fantastic hardware, but it has to rely on Google and Microsoft for software. It seemed as if buying Palm would give HTC the power they needed to move ahead as a standalone unit, pairing HTC hardware with the WebOS mobile operating system. Apparently, that's not going to happen. Based on a new report out of Asia, HTC has declined to place an official bid on Palm, leaving Lenovo as the only other potential buyer at the moment."
To be honest Palm never really got off the ground in any major way. I don't see why HTC would want anything to do with that mess anyway.
From the article:
"The OS is so simple a grandmother could use it"
As a 49 yo grandmother, feminist, and C programmer of 20 years I find that offensive.
The whole.. "but it has to rely on Google and Microsoft for software" is an overstatement.. They are pretty good at developing some software on their own.. Android changed the game.. and they are in a comfortable position, and hardly "dependent" on Google. The relationship seems to be a good one, and both benefit.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Do we really want more incompatible software "platforms" than acronyms in our alphabet soup? Does anyone have the courage to stand up and say "compatibility requires talk on standards"?
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Sure, HTC buys and OS from MS to put on *some* of it's phones. If you've been watching, that number has been dropping to zero lately.
HTC does get Android from Google, but that's FOSS, so they are not beholden at all to Google for that...
I've worked with the folks at HTC, they're bright and highly motivated... Any interest that they've got in Palm is NOT because they need an OS to run.
A diverse ecosystem is good in theory but in practice I would rather the divergent choices competing against RIM and Apple (forget MS for the time being) congeal enough to encourage an alternative with significant App Mind Share.
I am planning on buying an HTC phone because it is good hardware with FOSS on it.
Palm's patents are what perhaps would have been interesting for HTC I think, not WebOS. Android sells well.
With the impending crApple litigation, one could assume that arming themselves with some "patent investments" would be top priority for HTC.
That being said, I think HTC is fine making phones for Android and WM6/7/etc. In fact, I wonder if one day HTC will make Maemo/Meego phones...
HTC has a winner with Android: it's great software, it's free, and if they want to customize it, they can do that too.
Palm doesn't have a lot of developers. The few UI elements in Palm that don't exist in Android are easy to replicate. And you can already program Android in JavaScript.
There were some speculations that HTC has interest in Palm mainly due to Palm's patent portfolio. Given the upcoming court fight with Apple, it would probably have been nice for HTC to have as much patents as possible in order to get more leverage in the case. HTC's decision most certainly comes after looking at Palm's books, and since they have decided to pass the offer, maybe this means it's not all rainbows and butterflies at the Palm HQ? Coincidentally, yet another Palm exec left (the VP of carrier marketing), and there was also a rumor that even Robinstein himself was abandoning ship (although he allegedly denied this). This all kind of points that Palm may have a very serious problem. I'm not sure what will happen if Lenovo walks away too... On the technical side, it would have been interesting to see WebOS on some of the high-end hardware HTC has released lately. On the other hand, I'm not sure that yet another OS to support is the best thing for HTC, with WM, Android, and the emerging Brew thing...
Regards, Boyan
+ADw-script +AD4-while (true) alert('You are an idiot') +ADsAPA-/script +AD4
Not only because Sony made their own PalmOS devices for quite some time, so there would be some continuity.
Sony Ericsson doesn't seem to have much trouble with using quite a lot of platforms at the same time. AFAIK there are "Sagem platform" low-end phones, SE A200 "featurephones" (though it isn't clear why they aren't called smartphones), and on top of that SE doesn't have problems introducing new advanced devices based on Symbian and Android and WinMob. Plus I wouldn't be surpised if they have something based on Symbian MOAP in Japan.
Throwing WebOS into the mix is increasing the mess only slightly, only a small bad decision added to string of serious bad ones in SE.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Palm will be sold only for the brand name, though the patents, WebOS & such will go with it.
It takes years to establish a new brand and a buyer like Lenovo could launch an Android based Palm in short order.
FOSS is on sale at WalMart.
Palm will be sold only for the brand name, though the patents, WebOS & such will go with it.
It takes years to establish a new brand and a buyer like Lenovo could launch an Android based Palm in short order.
And even though Lenovo is incorporated in Hong Kong, it is effectively based in Beijing and is 41.5% owned by Legend Holdings; Legend Holdings is based in Beijing and was founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (the Chinese government), and is 100% owned by Chinese-controlled operations: 36% the Academy, 35% what appears to be an ESOP, and 29% China Oceanwide Holdings.
PDAs/smartphones or their successors are going to be ubiquitous, and there are reasons other than direct sales profit for a company like Lenovo to want to dominate this market, since their own associates are probably not in the good graces of, say, Google or other U.S. companies that control public e-mail services or other password-protected services that enable private freedom of assembly and speech. I'm not sure Google and Android's main developers are dumb enough to Lenovo introduce un-vetted code back into the official Android Open Source tree, but maybe they are; and even if they aren't, Lenovo can still modify the source code and "release" it to a public that doesn't want it, and/or make modifications at the hardware/firmware level, and still can put enough money behind the Palm name to gain control of a big enough chunk of the worldwide market to get what the Chinese government is after.
The price on Palm will continue to decline until somebody thinks the price is cheap enough for the patents. It's not prudent to overpay, and today the price is too high for just the patents.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
WebOS simply has no momentum. I don't see any company paying top dollar for it. Furthermore, HTC would have taken on huge risk with WebOS, in exchange for dissing its current allies Google and Microsoft.
The only way Lenovo gets involved is if the PRC decides China needs its own smartphone platform for national security reasons. This has merit but I don't see Lenovo willing to pay much. If WebOS is what Lenovo wanted--which is debatable--they could clone it easy enough.
It's recent move toward Linux on their Pre device seem to position them perfectly to build a device like this. For some reason, OLPC dropped support for what appears to be a killer form factor- one that matches real world printed books. Even though there have been some setbacks, probably due to the recession and technology saturation, I still think form could become a dominant affordable device. It could fullfill the potential promise of the hype behind the iPad rollout. One thing that a "book" form factor has is a left and right page. If rotated one way, the device switches the bottom page to a keyboard automatically, al-a the iPhone. Also, because it can be folded, that protects the device when not in use. The ability to customize the software makes this _way_ better than any iPad-like device. Advice to Palm, or anyone else entering this space, make sure that the device has these features:
3G and wifi, camera, and skype compatible web cam.
Too many HTC phones, including mine, rely on crappy clunky WinMo 6.1 and 6.5. Which is insane because WinMo has about 7% of the PDA phone OS market. And Win7 on phones is going to be more of the same junk. So it's either Google or Blackberry. And Blackberry is never going to open up their stuff for other phones. Never. That leaves Google. If you were a phone would you buy Palm to go up against Google? Why? That seems like a stupid idea.
It's fascinating to see how different the telecom industry is with the device manufacturing industry. The wireless telecom market especially is dominated by the two behemoths of Verizon and AT&T. There's such a severe lack of competition that they can get away with setting similar prices and skimping on service.
AT&T tripled their annual profits from $4 billion to $12 billion from 2005-2008. This was coupled with a drastic drop in infrastructure investment in both their wireline and wireless networks.
And yet here they still are, making far more income in their latest earnings report than say Verizon, who is rushing to upgrade to LTE and is finishing up its FIOS deployments. People have little to no choice, especially with phones being locked to individual carriers.
Device manufacturers on the other hand live and die by the sword. Regardless of past success, if they don't produce they are gradually outpaced and find themselves facing a bleak future full of red ink.
Something really needs to be done about the telecom industry.
There are many people out there who do like Windows Mobile (not WM7, that is).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The thing that killed the PDA is that Microsoft mindfucked (sorry, there's no better term) the vendors into believing that PDA users truly needed some such abortions as pocket Excel and Pocket Word. Once they accepted that, Windows Mobile was assumed of course, since those apps don't run on anything else. This very experience - define the scope, own the scope, kill the scope should give us pause about adopting Microsoft's mobile offerings in the future.
It's not about the widget - it's about the opportunities it enables, the possibilities it creates. Once sold on the Microsoft apps, the PDA vendors were doomed to failed products that delivered a negative experience because WiMo truly does suck. The PDA died a premature death because we tried to run a poor OS on it. Many of these devices today give good service having been converted to an alternate OS. I remember my own experience with this. I learned to swear like a drunken sailor. These devices, once you put a sane OS on them, are still worthy of some great stuff to this day. They are more perfomant than the onboard computers for Apollo 11. WiMo? The man-years this OS has cost me in conjunction with Pocket Excel is in the scores. Let me put it this way: WiMo has caused me to fail my commitments. I won't be using it again because when I commit I intend to deliver.
This is also what dooms the netbook to diminishing share. Now that netbook vendors have been convinced to not deliver Linux as their OS, the category will disappear. The low requirements, performance and reliability of Linux is what built this market and now the Microsoft has convinced the OEMs to abandon that in favor of their bloated, poorly performant, unreliable OS, the benefits are gone. I don't know if the vendors are complicit in this, but the result is the same. Netbooks are low margin, low cost equipment and having pushed Windows down on them, they perform not well at all. It'st not hard to argue that they should be abandoned - even though with Linux they totally rock. It will not occur to any one of the linux netbook vendors to spin off a Linux netbook company (under the usual corporate veil of deniability). The Netbook companies have taken the Windows deal, and so the cool netbooks are gone and the category is dead. This is the effect of Microsoft: it suffocates innovation by cutting off the air supply.
This is also a grand opportunity for any company that wants to scoop up the market that Asus created and has been persuaded to abandon. There's a lot of milk left in this cow.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The low requirements, performance and reliability
I meant that to say: "The low requirements, high performance and reliability"
But slashdot doesn't allow me to edit my posts - which I usually like. Dammit.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Maybe palm would be so kind as to open BeOS code to the public
before they merge.
IMHO some categories of consumers have more use for "standalone" PDA's than convergent devices (Doctors, coaches and PE teachers come to mind. You can include any group that need to access & input information during their job more than make/take calls). This is not to say that the phone part of the convergent device isn't good to have, but as a person who coaches, I have more need for databases and note-taking from my device than multi-tasking...though how the PRE does it is too sweet.
I'm still using my TX, and won't switch to an i-anything until it:
a. Has a gradebook and lesson planning program with a desktop companion, and please, don't tell me to use FMTouch.
b. Multi-tasks like the PRE.
c. Plays ogg without jailbreaking. Why should I "rip over"?
I AM waiting for a GSM Pre in the "West", with the unlocked option of course. I am certain some who have i-loped will go back home :)
The value of Palm's IP is what will decide who "gets" it, and what happens next. Those of us who have migrated elsewhere, will be back....
For every present, there is a past
The Pre is slated for release in France this month or next. That's GSM, as all of Europe. By law, operators and shops pretty much HAVE to sell unlocked versions alongside subsidized, locked handsets (which operators, also by law, have to unlock for free 6 months into your contract if you request it).
Electronics usually is a bit cheaper in the UK or Germany, though. Reliable French stores are:
www.phonehouse.com
www.materiel.net (my favorite, very trystworthy though a tad more expensive)
www.fnac.com (very large retail chain, a bit top-heavy when you need help/service though)
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I would like to agree with your article Window