Apple, RIM, Google All Bid On Palm

imamac writes "It seems HP was only one of many bidders for the struggling Palm. The others included Apple, RIM and even Google. You may now commence speculation on why the various companies wanted Palm."

Comments

It seems to me

[breakzoidbeg]

That Palms Patent portfolio would have been the target. Palm has been around for years, and they have a deep patent well to draw from.

Re:It seems to me

[Meshach]

Agreed it seems pretty obvious. At least not "really, really weird at best" like the article says. A more reliable source says it better.

Re:It seems to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention they built a better phone and OS than any of their competitors.

Re:It seems to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Right what's why they went out of business.

Re:It seems to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Right what's why they went out of business.

Staying in business and having the best product often have little to do with each other.

Re:It seems to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you've seen the Pre / Pre Plus, otherwise, you wouldn't be saying that. And I'm saying this from and Android fan perspective.

HTML/CSS based interface (which means all app scale smoothly, 40+ apps running simultaneous without even skipping a heartbeat (providing real-time snapshots of running tasks with their card system), an awesome notification system, a unified contact system (from various sites, contact lists), and had both a walled-garden/homebrew dual approach.

Unfortunately, too many people are hard up on the iP* products that they don't even bother looking at alternatives. I didn't buy it because the only carrier here that has it is known to be misleading in their prices and I'd rather not support that, and doesn't have the Pre Plus either now that it's out. If it were available unlocked to AWS, I'd get it for several of my family members.

Re:It seems to me

[TheNinjaroach]

Better OS, sure. Better phone? Ehh, I don't know about that.

I just picked up a Palm Pre a couple weeks ago, yeah I was late to the show. The OS is really (really) nice. I prefer it over the iPhone and I think it blows Android out of the water. But the hardware isn't great and the form factor is rather bad. The phone takes 3-4 minutes to boot and must be rebooted fairly frequently. The only way to turn on your screen is to press an awkwardly placed button on the corner, even harder to get to when you have the slider open. The web browser works far better than I ever expected for any phone, but it's limited by the relatively low screen resolution. The CPU is not fast enough (but are they ever?) and causes awkward delays when trying to answer phone calls.

I held out on buying a Pre for so long because I wanted to see a taller, slimmer, faster and perhaps touch-only model of the phone. Now I know it's what they needed. Instead, they waited a year to dish out AT&T and Verizon re-hashes of the same old stuff. I wish they were purchased by someone better than HP, but if they ever release a WebOS-based tablet I will definitely be interested.

Patents?

[levell]

I don't understand why Apple or Google (Or Nokia) would want Palm. At least if the main asset was WebOS - none of these companies would ditch the mobile OS they are backing in favour of it.

So my wild arsed guess is that Palm had enough patents that the various companies thought would be useful in the court battles that are just beginning. But at the price a company like Palm would fetch - the patents must be valuable!

It would fit with HP paying more - they get the patents and WebOS and they weren't previously backing a mobile OS.

Re:Patents?

[LWATCDR]

Well RIM really doesn't have a good OS going forward at this point. If they could integrate WebOS with their push email and messenger then use their great keyboard you could have a very hot device.
For Apple it would be to have the patents so no one could use them to defend themselves from Apples patents.
For Google it would be have the patents to defend themselves from Apple and probably Microsoft.
For Nokia it would probably to have patents to use to attack Apple with.

My sneaking feeling is that Palm has a lot of patents on sync. The Palm devices where really the first device I remember that did a desktop sync like the iphone / ipod does. I believe that is why Apple never went through with their threats at Palm. Those patents could mean that Apples iTunes and Microsoft's Activesync are all infringing.
Of course this is all a guess off the top of my head.

Honestly WebOS is great mobile OS. The SDK sucked but they are fixing that. The UI is very good and it is easy to use.
The prefect mobile phone IMHO would be.
The WebOS UI.
With Android's or iPhone's app store.
With RIM's Email, messaging, but with Android'ss gmail and IM support.
Garmin's navigation.
On HTC, Samsung, and or Motorola's hardware.
With iPhone4's battery life.
And with Microsoft's Zune pass.

Re:Patents?

[JourneymanMereel]

For the most part I like your list... but I'd swap out Android's IM support and keep webOS's client (with a couple more providers supported).

Also, the rumor is that the PDK will enable very easy porting of iPhone apps to webOS, so I'd imagine that will help bolster their app catalog.

I recently switched from the Palm Pre to the HTC Evo. The only things I really like about the Evo better are: the hardware (though I miss my real keyboard) and the number of apps. Android itself just isn't all its cracked up to be IMHO.

BeOS

[maliqua]

They all just wanted to release a new BeOS!!! seriously what else would you want with palm ?

Re:BeOS

[jaak]

BeOS was sold when Palm spun off PalmSource, which is now owned by Access http://www.access-company.com/

Re:BeOS

[vbraga]

From a great operating system to a shitty mobile browser, how sad.

Isn't it obvious?

[msauve]

Apple wanted Palm's handwriting recognition technology, so they could reintroduce the Newton.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[fermion]

Palm did not have handwriting recognition. Palm used gesturers to represent letters.

What palm does has, as been mentioned, is patents. Palm, along with Apple, is practically the only independent innovator in the PDA market, which we now see fully formed in the from of smartphone, a device with was instrumental in creating.

HP was probably a little more motivated as they have seem have set a path to growth of snapping up good hardware companies with good portfolios that can then be used to create products.

I suspect that Apple and RIM simply wanted to cut out the competition. Google, being a young company with little wisdom, would have benefitted from the hardware experience Palm.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[IntlHarvester]

To explain the joke, Palm got started selling its Graffiti software for Newton to replace Apple's dismal handmall reaquisition.

Clear for apple

[postmortem]

They want their antenna design.

aaa..

[novar21]

umm HP already won the bid. Unless Google makes HP an offer its a done deal.

Marginally Useful

[bill_mcgonigle]

I can see why those three would bid, but it's also clear why HP was willing to pay more - they gained something entirely new. So, they'll gain a real competitive edge from the buy, not just a fanciful IP one.

To jack up the price for HP

[cryfreedomlove]

HP paid $1.2 Billion. That's about $1 Billion more than it was really worth. I think Apple, RIM, and Google deliberately hobbled HP by bidding up the price but not high enough that HP would not still take that dinosaur into their house.

Re:To jack up the price for HP

[MrHanky]

By that definition, fraud doesn't exist, just FYI. It's a really fucking dumb meme you're spreading.

Why not Microsoft, Nokia, or Sony?

[CaroKann]

I think these companies missed out on a good thing.

Microsoft would gain the WebOS, plus some phone hardware. In Microsoft's hands, the WebOS could have been offered across multiple hardware platforms, creating a good competitor to Android. Or, Microsoft could have simply folded aspects of the WebOS into Windows 7.

Nokia would have immediately regained a good, solid foothold in the US market.

Sony would have gained a versatile OS to power its device portfolio.

Re:Why not Microsoft, Nokia, or Sony?

[MichaelSmith]

Microsoft would gain the WebOS,

Not in a million years. Remember the Kin. MSFT could buy the Pre, spend two years porting windows 7 to it then sell a few thousand units and write it off on their tax.

Re:Why not Microsoft, Nokia, or Sony?

[h4rr4r]

MS would have killed WebOS never will they put forth anything based on linux. Their CEO called it a cancer.

Be Inc included

[Henriok]

It would have been an epic irony if Apple had bought Palm and gotten the remnants of Be Inc with it. I love the tech industry! I made a graph over the turbulent history of Palm, sorting out the finer details in the timeline. For those of you that haven't payed attention the last 20 years. http://alltommac.se/files/2010/04/palm-history-graph.png

Re:Be Inc included

[drinkypoo]

It would have been an epic irony if Apple had bought Palm and gotten the remnants of Be Inc with it.

Where's the irony? It would permit Steve to put the last nail in BeOS' coffin, proving how great NeXTStep 11, er, OSX is. Well, to him. Seems like a natural thing to do when you're leading a cult of personality. Maybe not logical, but then "you're holding it wrong, don't hold it like a phone" is batshit insane. Regardless, it would have made absolutely zero business sense for Apple to buy Palm. Apple does not need the tech (too late to go BeOS anyway) and would not get the customers.

Re:Has anyone ever used the WebOS?

[billhuey]

Yes, iPhone & Android fanboys just don't know.

However WebOS has its fair share of nasty bugs that include a system-wide memory that forces you to reboot at some point. The messaging app is barebones and need notifications for when a user comes online.

The cloud aware contact integration is pretty much out of this world at this point. I was able to add a simple Jabber protocol and it was able to 'join' folks I know against all existing contacts intelligently.

The browser could be better as well, fewer bugs. Overclocked kernels running at 720mhz with 24M compcache seems to be the magic sweet spot now for the original Sprint device.

A lot of folks in the homebrew community is pretty hardcore about hacking this device.

Re:Apple vs. Nokia

[BasilBrush]

To me, patent trolls are companies that people are companies that don't actually create any products themselves, but just hold patents and use them to extract money from companies that do create products. They are parasites.

Neither Apple nor Nokia are patent trolls.

HP *needs* Palm more than the others

[tekrat]

Because HP isn't in the OS business, yet. Think about it, right now, HP is beholden to Microsoft for stuff to run on their hardware. And right now, it is clear that MS is screwing up right and left in anything OTHER than a desktop OS/Office suite. They have *no* mobile solution. And mobile is the future.

Apple has lead the way, and Google is catching up fast. We're not sure where RIM is, but they have annoucned a Tablet, which means that *maybe* they have an OS for it.

But HP's "slate" will be an abysmal failure, UNLESS they have a killer OS ... something that can take on the iPad and really revolutionize the market. And who has a Tablet OS that's actually good enough to take on Apple?

Why, that would be Palm. Poor Palm, hamstrung by lackluster marketing and so-so hardware, with mediocre sales as a result. Yet, their OS (and patent portfolio) is so valuable, I'm surprised half of Silicon Valley isn't trampling over each other to get it.

A Tablet running WebOS could actually compete with the iPad. *If* if were marketed properly, and *if* the hardware was good too. Ironically, HP is the only company I would trust to make decent hardware, even after the purging of all their good engineers due to Carly. But they have the muscle and the East Asia contacts to make it happen.

In other words, HP could make Microsoft irrelevant in the mobile marketplace... With Google playing catch-up. Now wouldn't *that* be ironic?