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

Re:Offensive

[Anonymous Coward]

As an insensitive male chauvinist pig douchebag, I find you offensive.

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.

Re:HTC not beholden to Google or MS

[masmullin]

HTC does get Android from Google, but that's FOSS, so they are not beholden at all to Google for that

I think you have an over inflated sense of Google's benevolence when it comes to Android. While most Android is open sourced there are key components needed by cellphones which are not (eg. the radio protocol stack).

Android isn't like Ubuntu where you can download all the source, compile it, and install it on any old x86 system. Android requires special knowledge, special proprietary components, and special tools to run on a cellphone. If you doubt this, I dare you to install android on your mobile phone.

When it comes to a phone producer like HTC, the difference between google and microsoft probably isn't all that much. HTC probably has source access to winMo for it's windows mobile phones, and can probably edit that source code w/o having to push it's changes back up to M$. With Google, HTC probably has less red tape to getting updated source patches.

Re:How many incompatible platforms today, sir?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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"?

I'm not seeing how your comment applies. WebOS uses rich HTML applications on top of Webkit. So anything that runs on it can easily be made to run on the iPhone and Android. Palm's recent forays into OS and software development have been very standards compliant and interoperable.

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

[sunderland56]

For a long time, EVERY PDA was called a Palm Pilot, they pretty much defined the category.

And then time moved on. Stand-alone PDAs don't exist any more, HTC is a major player in the smartphone world, and Palm is a failing company.
When the Model T arrived, it pretty much defined its category. Don't see them around much any more.

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.