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3Com Files to Spin Palm Division Off in IPO
It's been an ongoing story about 3Com and its PalmPilot division. The question, of course, has been what to do with it. Just a few months ago, we covered their original plan for spinning off the division, but now it looks like they are actually putting the plan in motion and we should see an IPO in about six months.
I bought a palm pilot a copule years ago and stopped using it after a few months of novel fun.
Still use the software for contacts on my box, but am wondering - are any of you out there total palm junkies, and do you find them very useful?
Never leave home without it. Can I live without it? Yeah, but since I have one, I take it wherever I go. Now I'm never without my phone numbers, appoitments, and addresses. My memory sucks.
That kind of reminded me of Dr. Evil saying he was ransoming the world for, "One MILLION dollars!"
Are they just being humble? Unless the stock market comes to its senses in the next few months, I rather suspect they'll get a little more than $100 million (given absurdly high IPOs we've been seeing)!
Dana
With the backing of 3Com, you knew they had a parent company strong enough to fight off the big boys. Going out on their own, though, they're in a marketspace with Microsoft, HP, and Compaq, among others. In some ways, this feels like a stab at making some big IPO money by the folks at 3Com -- spin 'em off, watch the stock go high on the IPO, sell the stock and count your money. I'm curious, and a little skeptical, if they'd continue to help them out if the Palm spinoff starts to run into rocky waters. They've already got theirs, so what's it to 'em?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Hmmm, this sounds interesting, but the main question is, are they getting rid of it because it's losing money, or are they spinning it off because, it's gotten too big for them to handle, or because they have other interests they wish to pursue instead? Anybody got more info on this?
--- I think, therefore I exist, anything outside of that is uncertain.
Yet
Another
Fucking
Initial
Public
Offerring
Do you think this helps or hurts Handspring?
I suppose the fact that Palm is stepping out bodes well for the handspring folks as they get to go out first. However, the anticipation factor in handspring probably got scuttled a little bit too.
Just a note, Palm has been is own entity since USR days. A huge orginizational gap. This will put into name (and dollars) the seperation that is already there. Foo
Yes, but whats that got to do with the price of tea in D'ni?
Can anyone honestly say that a Palm IPO would be a flop? They have the name recognition. They have the product. They are beating Microsoft in the PDA market by a wide margin. I predict fireworks on the first day of trading.
We're all allowed one totally obvious comment, right?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I had thought that part of the reason that some of the orignal creators of the Palm Pilot left 3com to found Handspring was becase 3com would not spin off Palm computing. Or am I mistaken?
I wonder how long it'll be before an independent Palm Pilot company gets bought out by a bigger fish? It's rumored that Apple, in particular, has had its eye on Palm for quite some time now...
These things arent really that great in my highly overrated opinion.Cool,yes.A must have,no.Sure,they can make money on 'em by telling people they really need one,like home you need a Pentium III to "get the most out of the internet".Haha,yeah,right...
They're not going to make as much as, say, VA Linux or Amazon, because they actually sell something, and they're actually a real business. So, odds are the IPO will flop.
Personally, I find the amazing thing is that they didn't spin off the palm into a new company ages ago.
3Com's big name is in networking... no matter what else they do, they continue to be a network equipment supplier. The Palm, on the other hand, has little to do with 3com's popular image. In fact, some people probably are unaware of anything else 3com does... just work on the Palm.
By splitting the Palm away from the 3com name, the Palm is left to survive, and thrive, on it's own. The Palm doesn't have a huge impact on 3com's stock, because it is a side game. However, a company dedicated to producing the Palm would probably perform wonders in it's IPO... because the Palm is popular, works well, and generally has a name already.
Disclaimer: Hey, I could be wrong - I'm a geek, not a market analyst. Technically speaking, I'm way out of my depth.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
By the way, how come they never release the even numberes? I want a Palm VI, dammit!
So let me get this straight:
IPOs are typically used to obtain working capital for business development. But the Palm series is already popular and profitable.
Does this sound screwy to anyone besides me?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Today, Microsoft's new IPO spinoff, Solitaire Inc. opened at $700, up from $1.99. There are rumors of Solitaire buying Corel, but these rumors have not been confirmed.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Did anyone happen to notice the way 3COM stock has shot up as a result of this spin-off? Given the absurdity cloud that already seems to be forming around this IPO, it's probably going to do another VA...3COM may be a better bet, if you can't get in on the pre-IPO price.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
For more information, click here.
I'm no Wall Street analyst but I can see from a mile away that this will be big. Palm's got everything going for them. They've got a great product with universal appeal -- everyone from high school kids up to executives have Pilots. They barely even need to advertise - their stuff sells itself.
Even though the Linux companies seem somewhat shaky, Palm looks pretty sound. I wish I weren't a poor student and had enough $$$ to let e-trade sell me some IPO stock.
I've been hanging on to my 3com stock for 2 years
now, watching it do nothing but go down and sit
at pitifully low prices.
this IPO announcement brings me hope that maybe
someday i can actually get my money back out of
3com.
w00w00
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
OK....
Now everybody start coding Palm apps so you can get in on the IPO!
Yes they said they hope to raise about $100 million, but then later in the story it says that they are allowing AOL, Motorola, and Nokia as large investors in 3Com to in buy 4.5% but not more than $225 million. By my calculations if $225 million was 4.5% then the total amount raised would be $5,000,000,000. Yes that's right folks, that is nine zeros better known as $5 Billion dollars. Not to humble IMO...
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
PALM's clear profit margin is an obvious liability in "the new economy." Their P/L (price to loss) ratio just can't compete with LNUX, RHAT or the other big boys.
;)
When will these starry-eyed corporate types learn? I mean, if a company already has a profit margin, then it can't have room for the immensely valuable future growth, right? Right??
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Clearly, it's the leading player in the handheld category of devices, and clearly handhelds are where a lot of action will be for the next few years. But equally, handhelds need to be wired, tethered, and tied to existing platforms for awhile to take advantage of the vast networks of data which already exist.
By being independent, PalmPilot would be free to make alliances all over the place. A company like Compaq, for instance, might not "deal" with IBM as readily as they would with an independent. However, an independent will have problems growing quickly enough to cover all of the opportunities. Here lies the strength of a company like IBM having a division like PalmPilot. Think what the Apple Macintosh might have done had it been an IBM product in the early 80's!
There may not actually be a way for one player to capture the lion's share of the economic value of this market. Go it alone and you risk being the VCR Beta or the Mac, while turning it into the industry standard like VHS means you are just one of many players. Of course, the Microsoft story shows that it can be done, but I'd think that would be hard to pull off in this market. Back when MS was creating its monopoly, reverse engineering and cloning the PC seemed daunting, but not today. Plus, competitors are much more wary given what Microsoft did. Opensourcing it would be VERY cool... for the customers. Hard to recommend it to 3Com with a totally straight face as it would open them up to shareholder lawsuits.
Anyway, it doesn't make sense as a division of 3Com, no synergies at all with the sales force, channels, customers, etc. So, how should they dispose of it? They undoubtedly have had an eye on some of the wild IPOs lately and figure that's the best way to get the most money out of it now (watch: they'll tout it as a linux pure-play! :) which might make a pile of dough for them but won't necessarily yield the most successful outcome for the platform.
Very exciting time for the industry, though.
Now if only they find a decent distro of Linux for the palm pilot, their IPO can probably increase 1000% on the release day.
I got a palm III at the begining of the year. At first it was the coolest thing and I tried to use it for everything. But I was never satisfied with the pen recognition. It worked, but I was limited to the speed that I write at. Personally I can type much much faster that I can write something. I ended up not using it and eventually got rid of it.
Now I use an HP Jornada 680 and I love it. I can actually use it for taking meeting notes, working on Word documents as well as all the other personal information I store in it. It's great for the plane flights too because I never have enough room to open my notebook all the way, but with this I can use it easily. Sure its bigger and a little heavier but I don't mind. I just started carring a leather organizer again when I take it out of the office. The voice record feature works great for getting those instant thoughts. On top of all that, it's actually useful for browsing the web when I dial-in from home. I can even use secure pages and check my bank account, email, etc. I love it and would not go back to Palm.
To sum it up, my personal answer is that the palm computing platform did not work for me. I wanted to do more than it would let me. I didn't mind the increase in size. I can actually use the jornada keyboard like it was a full size one.
My final point, when I was at Comdex this year I saw people scribbling notes as fast as they could on their palms while I entered the same ammount of information in a fraction of the time on my keyboard. I saw most palm users quit mid-way through sessions while I never had a problem.
The Palm is the only 3Com product that I can think of that is sold directly to consumers. Everything else is networking equipment sold into very specific vertical markets. (Maybe winmodems are another exception, but I would imagine that resellers are the majority of purchasers.)
Perhaps 3Com is worried that focusing on keeping "Best Buy" and other consumer outlets happy and selecting the right fruity colors for the plastic shell is detracting their management from pushing their commercial equipment. IBM stopped selling home computers for a similar reason.
Of course, what good is naming a stadium after yourself if you have a funny name only sell obscure networking equipment? I guess there really is no such thing as bad publicity.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This shows us a clear direction where mobile computing is now headed to: There will be a fierce fight between WinCE and Palm camps over dominance in handheld WAP handsets or, later in the future (not many years more, anyway), powerful handheld mobile Internet-enabled computers.
No one will be using their cell phone only for talking in ten years (+-5 years, depends on when the 3rd Generation UMTS cell phones start appearing on consumer market) AND no one will be using their Palm X disconnected at that time.
I'm not sure what effect Apple ownership would have on overall innovation. Apple tends to be ahead of the curve on some things, but can also be behind on other things. They tend to burn their bridges when they switch technologies, though, hence my comment above about legacy support.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
...cause it doesn't have linux in the title!
maybe if they change their name to "3com linux systems"
:)
As always, the success of this company will depend on what it can do next. It won't be an automatic success just because the Palm[X] was successful. It will have a nice stream of licensing royalties from Handspring, and sales of existing products are good, but it will have to innovate in order to thrive. Imagine the irony of licensing Handspring's "springboard" expansion card technology?
I'm just waiting for a big notepad-sized palm with a color screen that can read regular web pages, has a nice text editor, and costs $300.
Looks like Palm is lined up with all the big players, so 3Com is no longer needed to provide "parental support"... kinda like when the kid in college is about to graduate and earn more in a salary than both parents combined...
Just some names: Nokia, Motorola, Sony
Handhelds: PalmOS vs. Linux???
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
No arguements that a mini-laptop like a Jornada 690 is easier to type on. Of course, a real laptop is even easier in my opinion, and has more flexibility. When I need to take notes at a meeting, then I bring my laptop, but when I'm running around during the day, I bring my Palm 5000. I treat my Palm like it's a organizer and the only notes that I make on it are brief, but for real work, I use my laptop.
A Palmtop is smaller than a mini-laptop - this has all the disadvantages that a small size has... small screen that's hard to read, no keyboard, little or not expansion, etc. But, it is smaller. If you are like me and will only carry something around if it can fit in your pocket, then the Jornada is simply too big. Also a Palm is cheaper. Those Jornada 680's start at roughly $900. This is about 4X the price of a Palm IIIe, and approx. 1.5X the price of a Palm VII.
Still, there's no doubt that you are correct, Palms are for some, and not for others. I tell anyone who asks about my Palm, to buy one from a store with a good return policy.
I meant to say I use a Landware GoType keyboard. There are other keyboards available, but for me I am quite happy with this combination. Lots of times I wouldn't want lug around anything bigger than a Palm3.
-ec
I have a Palm V (that I bought for $200) and when it broke (wouldn't turn on anymore) I could not;
:)
o Remember my home number
o Remember my wife's work number (she wasn't happy)
o Remember my home zip code
o Frequent long trips to the in laws were boring because no games !!!
I'm totally dependent on this device !!! If you don't use yours send it to me
- sigs are for wimps.
Palm is banking on their OS being the big seller for the embedded device market, vs selling hardware.. Handspring, IBM, Symbol, TRG, Qualcomm are but a few of the hardware manufacturers that license the Palm OS. With agreements with companies like Nokia and Sony to boot, they are in a very good position for the budding, soon to explode embedded device/wearable PC market.
Sure a PDA is cool and all, but thats not the Killer App. An easy to use, crash proof(mostly), fast, cheap, handheld window to the infinite resources of the internet.. now thats utility. And I dont really need Windows/Linux/MacOS or any other full figured operating system to accomplish this. Granted there will always be some wonderful open sourcers that shrink a kernel down, but IMHO Palm OS will most likely be the OS thats running on such a device.
They pretty much have it in the palm VII's (all but the cheap part) I use my wireless palm to read slashdot on the bus to work everyday, check my email, etc. My boss uses his to unlock his car when he locks the keys in (using the infrared port). The value of these devices cant be understated. There is just too many possiblities.
The whole IPO craze is definitely a little disturbing, brought about because everybody wishes that they had bought some cisco 5 years ago, but IMHO you'll probably wish you had some Palm stock 5 years from now...
Unless the stock market comes to its senses in the next few months, I rather suspect they'll get a little more than $100 million (given absurdly high IPOs we've been seeing)!
I believe that $100 million figure is just for the 20% of the company that will be sold to the public. According to this New York Times article, the figure is actually a bit under 20%. That said, they're shooting for something closer to a $500 million market cap, though I'd say that still leaves plenty of room for the share price to jump to insanely wild heights in the first few days of trading.
Yes, I know that there's other versions out there (anybody know of good instructions to get it to work with StarOffice?), but I'd still like to see 3com's original program ported over. I'm willing to bet if they announced better Linux support, their stock would go up further.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
Game news? http://www.pcfan.com
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I actually received a Palm Pilot Professional (old school) as a high school graduation gift from my parents. The first thing I did with the device (after setting the time, date, etc.) was download far too many games and install them on my Palm. It was fun for a while, but as I continued to dump all sorts of apps on my Pilot, it started to freeze periodically and crash regularly. Frightened at what I had done, I hid my Pilot in a dark corner of my desk drawer and forgot about it for more than a year (and after the warranty had ended, of course). Now, a year later! All the news about Palms renewed my desire to be in-sync, so I decided to try using it again. I swore to myself that I wouldn't install any extra applications on it, then proceeded to put all of my address, schedule, and random info jonx on my PalmPilot. I thought I might be deluding myself to believe that the problem had just gone away as a result of my neglect, but the Palm did work for a few days. Then it froze! The only way to get out of its frozenness was to reset everything. After I told my brother about the regularly scheduled freezings, he suggested that I do a "hard reset" and wipe out everything. I tried that and was so excited after 4 consecutive days without crashing that I announced to all my friends that the Palm issue had been solved. Then on the fifth day, as I was trying to retrieve some very important information for one of my classes, it just wouldn't turn on!! Now to make my Pilot turn on, I have to put in new batteries each time. So I decided that after all this time, I should finally let go. I'm suffering from Palm withdrawal, feelings of isolation and helplessness..cluelessness, chaos and the like. But life goes on, and my system of scrawling things on crumpled and torn bits of paper is more expedient and trustworthy anyway. Good luck, users. May you learn from my mistakes.
is PayPal.
so what ?
many companies have ipos, who cares ?
Funny, but only about three weeks ago 3COM sold the manufacturing plant in Salt Lake City that makes Palm Pilots & USR PCMCIA (Megahertz division) products (www.manserve.com).
I also worked in that facility for a bit (6 months ago). And I got some impressions that 3COM corporate have different expectations than the realities of the USR/Megahertz PCMCIA manufacturing process, when compared to PC LAN cards (very small form factor, LOTS of parts count vs. lots of room, almost no parts).
It may also have to do with problems managing divisions/products that are too far removed from the 3COM core products that they are used to and understand. This way they don't have to worry about how to manage a product that isn't their forte'
Remember that 3COM probably bought USR so that they could cover more computer data COM bases. Palm Pilots are not directly associated with that racket, though they do use that kind of stuff.
It may not be the only reason, but could be a factor. And yes, make some bucks along the way.
What I wish: Why can't there be an IPO listing service? or am I just being stupid and not paying attention?
Apple has been interested in re-entering the PDA space for some time now. If they push in with their own entry they are likely to fragment the market and pull some of the steam out of Palm since anybody who is sticking to Windows CE at this point has a brain that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.
Palm makes a great product but they don't have very good mac specific features (though it used to be worse). With Apple growing in market share, this is a bad thing for Palm. Hopefully, Apple will buy up a stake in Palm and use that to influence the company to at least license the Palm OS out to Apple.
DB
There are hundreds(maybe thousands) of hard-working shareware developers out there for the Palm Platform. Palm wouldn't be as much a success as it is without them. Of course, most of the stuff isn't open source--so the developers aren't as altruistic as ,say, Linux software people. But wouldn't it be great if Palm followed Red Hat's lead and cut the developers in on the IPO?