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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."
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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.
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.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
They all just wanted to release a new BeOS!!! seriously what else would you want with palm ?
Apple wanted Palm's handwriting recognition technology, so they could reintroduce the Newton.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
They want their antenna design.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.
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
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
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.
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.