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."

Comments

HTC not beholden to Google or MS

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

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.

Maybe Palm's state is worse than it seemed

[Blazarov]

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...

Re:Good on HTC

[obarthelemy]

It seems Palm could not market water to the thirsty.

The Palm Pilot was the first successful PDA. I'm still using my TX, because it is so reliable and convenient. I'm still looking for as good an experience with smartphones.
The LifeDrive was everything the iPod is, minus the iTunes store, sexy ads, and "nano" option. Fatal oversights, it seems.
The Foleo was a netbook, a couple of years before netbooks took off.
The Treos are basically BlackBerrys without the push mail and the "pro" cachet.
And finally, the Pre has the snazziest mobile OS to this day, but glitchy hardware, and lame ads and distribution.

In the end, it seems to me that Palm got lots of things right, and systematically failed at key final steps. Advertising and distribution certainly, and also that extra feature that would really have made people sit up and notice that they needed the gizmos. I'll be sad to see them go, what a waste.