“How good is Palm’s hand? Never better, say some investors, pointing to booming sales of the company’s Treo smartphone and its greatly improved financial condition.,” Rachel Rosmarin reports for Forbes. “Time to fold, say others, arguing that the company ought to get out while the getting is good.”
“But if Palm decides to sell–the company’s shares are trading at around $36, which gives it a $1.8 billion market cap–who’s going to buy? Industry observers say the company’s assets–a loyal following, popular designs and established relationships with mobile carriers–would be enviable additions for a host of companies,” Rosmarin reports. “Apple Computer, for instance, has long been rumored to be cooking up some sort of wireless iPod. The company has filed for several patents for media players, including wireless connectivity, and Apple’s main processor supplier, PortalPlayer, said it would have a wireless chipset available to customers later this year.”
“Apple’s previous attempt at making a wireless iPod, via its partnership with Motorola, is widely seen as a failure. But in that case, Apple didn’t have start-to-finish control of the product. Buying Palm would help it accomplish that, as well as giving it a company that already has an established relationship with carriers like Sprint Nextel. That would be particularly helpful for Apple boss Steve Jobs, who has had a particularly prickly relationship with mobile carriers–last year he referred to the four dominant U.S. carriers as ‘orifices,'” Rosmarin reports. “Then again, argues Creative Strategies President Tim Bajarin, if Jobs is ever going to launch its own wireless device, he will likely insist on something that has been homegrown. ‘Apple’s DNA is such that if they decided to go in this direction, they’d use their own industrial-design wizardry,’ he argues. ‘Besides, Jobs pretty stubbornly doesn’t think smartphones are viable.'”
More potential suitors discussed, including Dell and HP, in the full article here.
“Ken Dulaney, who covers the handheld computing market for industry research firm Gartner, doesn’t see it. What Palm needs to help it survive the coming trends in the smartphone market, Dulaney says, is a partner with expertise in manufacturing handsets and access to low-cost handset parts. And that’s not Apple. An acquisition by Apple ‘would be disaster,’ Dulaney says,” Troy Wolverton reports for TheStreet.com.
Full article here.
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Let M$ or some other challenger buy Palm so they can set themselves back about $2B and lose the race anyway. Apple will come out with a phone and it will be home grown.
Apple buying Palm would be a complete waste of money. Palm doesn’t even own their OS anymore, so all Apple would get is some rather dull hardware, and a customer base that has been waiting years for Palm OS 6 to ship, which is never going to happen. Apple doesn’t need all that baggage.
Anyone think Apple couldn’t design a Treo killer if they wanted to? Apple already had the industrial design advantage, better brand recognition, better software talents. What the hell does Apple need Palm for?
No doubt Apple would be Palm’s (and loyal Palm fans) saviour. They could develop a cool new Palm OS that would be based on Darwin and would use XCode on Mac OS X to develop new Palm apps with. They probably wouldn’t have backwards compatibility, since they wouldn’t have any rights to the old Palm OS code, but that would be OK, because no one would want to run old Palm apps after seeing what new apps designed for Palm OS X would look like. Kind of like how after Mac OS X, nobody wanted to run Mac OS 9 apps anymore if they had a choice.
Palm had everything to gain from Apple buying them, Apple has very little to gain, so Apple might as well just design the hardware and OS themselves and lure all those starving Palm users over to their iPod branded PDA. I’ve been a Palm user for years (having owned 5-6 different Palms) and still am. The only reason I use a Palm product is because I refuse to use a Windows PocketPC product. If Palm goes away, i’ll just stop using a PDA. I hardly use it now anyway since I have my PowerBook with me every day and when I’m away from it, I have a mobile phone, iPod and web access to my .mac account for Address Book and iCal lookups.
Palm is on it’s way to becoming just another Windows Mobile brick maker anyway. I say we let it die off, Palm deserves it with all the bone headed mistakes they’ve made over the years.
Holy crap! How did i get a first post? Do I win something?
I’d be happy to see the Treo’s functionality mated with Apple’s design, with a bit of iPod functionality.
An acquisition by Apple ‘would be disaster,’ Dulaney says,”
Wholeheartedly agree.
Felix, you were not first,sorry. All you get is a lap dance from Bill Gates.
MW=head. I ain’t going to comment.
Two words. Nay Palm.
I meant to say ace and not Felix. Too many tokes on my crack pipe today.
i would be a huge mistake
does nothing to help them in the “living room race”
buy TIVO or Elagato
WAY OFF TOPIC!!
Apple has planned a special event with U2’s Bono!!
Actually it’s a fake sorrie for the false alarm
PALM isn’t worth 1.9 billion.
They have nothing!
Too much hair on that Palm.
Palm’s a loser. They’ve got nothing Apple needs including a Sprint/Nextel connection. Sprint totally sucks!
Geez, Apple doesn’t want or need anything to do with Palm. Enough of these stupid stories already please!
Apple buying Palm makes NO SENSE!
I agree with most folks. There’s nothing here for Apple and I don’t think SJ wants to relive the Newton experience.
Acquisition dollars could be better used in companies like Elgato/TIVO (as previously mentioned) or maybe a gaming software company. And if Apple ever decides to take a shot at the Enterprise maybe a coportate software company.
Considering the Newton STILL has a following with not only users, but developers as well, I don’t see Apple failing if they were to reenter the market.
A unit as elegant as the iPod and as functional as the Newton with the extensibility of both could potentially revolutionize the smart phone industry.
Apple could probably make a better smartphone by themselves. Throw Palm to MS and watch MS call it innovation
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I get pretty good use of my treo 650 with my mac machines. Even video and mp3 playback is good (still have an ipod for all that as I desire battery life to make phone calls). The limited amount of ram from an sd card keeps me from really making it replace my video ipod. 60 gigs vs 1 gig…..(2 if I spend the $$ equivalent to a nano). Now if I could run some sort of apple/bsd os on my treo, I’d wear a backpack of batteries to run it , just for the geek factor!
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F PALM..dang, i am tired of these old war stories..SLOOWW NEWS DAY!!
Does Apple buy Palm before or after they merge with Sun and are bought by Disney?
I’m a long time Palm user and love my new Palm TX, but I see absolutely NO point to these idiotic rumors. Palm has made mistake after strategic mistake.
• How many times did they change their name, spinoff, sell, and buy back portions of themselves. Bought out HandSpring. They’ve looked as bad as the Bush administration as far as coherent and long-term planning goes.
• They stopped making hardware innovations years ago.
• Their OS development went into suspended animation: what EVER happened with Palm OS 6?
• Palm squandered their huge marketshare lead and let their OS wither on the vine. Essentially, they handed over the PDA market to Microsoft’s PocketBloat PeeSea.
Did Microsoft pay them off or were they just hugely stupid?!!?
I don’t think Apple needs to BUY stupidity.
Lots of folks I know use & love the Blackberry. It would be nice to see Apple’s take on this device.
Apple has the tech. to do this on thier own if they chose to. No reason to spend money on old tech. The only way that Apple will survive is to stay ahead in the tech. game; which they have so far.
In addition, every acquasition has added something to the Mac line. What will Palm add that Apple has not already done?
Disaster. Palm was in steady decline and as a last ditch effort, tied its wagon to mobile MS operating systems. Why Apple would want to adopt that baggage I have no idea.
GOOGLE’s stock will keep going down and down and down, why.. simple..
Because 1000’s of entrepreneurs that saw Google’s success in advertising started their own Advertising Companies.
Which means Gravity… GOOGLE GRAVITY..
What i mean by google gravity is, Google is expected to lose 50% of its value by the year’s end.
Alot of investors that own Google stock also own other popular stocks, such as Apple, Amazon, etc..
So.. as investors lose money in Google they will sell their other stocks also.
Which will result in a gravitational pull, just like black holes in space, or planets, or stars.. you name it. they all have gravity. and since google has been a huge star, it has alot of gravity in it.
I think Stocks are headed south for the next SEVERAL(4-8) months.
So, I basicly sold my Amazon and Apple stocks today, and I quit trading.
“Alot of investors that own Google stock also own other popular stocks, such as Apple, Amazon, etc..
So.. as investors lose money in Google they will sell their other stocks also.
Which will result in a gravitational pull, just like black holes in space, or planets, or stars.. you name it. they all have gravity. and since google has been a huge star, it has alot of gravity in it.
I think Stocks are headed south for the next SEVERAL(4-8) months.
So, I basicly sold my Amazon and Apple stocks today, and I quit trading.”
So why was Apple up almost two point today?
BTW, remember if you sell a stock because you think it is going down, somebody else has to buy it that thinks it is going up.
“So why was Apple up almost two point today?”
I sold it at those highs.
It has gone up because it #1 stablized above $65
and #2 the upcoming Apple Event ( short term traders are in it )
#3 it seems to have hit the bottom ( short term investors are in it )
TODAY’s high is from long term investors becauuse it stopped going down and people wanted to get back in it.
As for Amazon, its a good company but its a washington company, just like REAL NETWORKS , i have nothing against amazon or apple. both are excellent companies.
I just think GOOGLE is headed to below $200 and it’s going to have a GRAVITY on all tech stocks.
Apple might hit $71 before it stops going higher, however in the long run the GOOGLE is out there, a star with gravity to bring many other victims down with itself.
If apple did buy palm, it would probably be a completely redesigned product, not just slap the apple logo on it.
If apple had something like a treo, I would probably buy it. I used a pda for years, and would rather not go back to a paper-based calendar. thats old-school but not in a good way.
I could use a good pda/phone type of deal, or even just a handheld computer like a pda but more full-featured, maybe dockable/sync-able to a full computer.PDA’s haven’t disappeared, but Palm’s line seems to have stagnated. Innovation is needed and that’s what apple is good at. they didn’t invent mp3 players, but innovated it.
“Would Apple buying Palm be fruitful or disaster?”
Absolute disaster. Apple doesn’t need to own Palm’s problems.
“But if Palm decides to sell–the company’s shares are trading at around $36, which gives it a $1.8 billion market cap–who’s going to buy?”
Who said anything about wanting to sell? If Palm had any future potential they’d be a very ripe target for a hostile takeover. The fact that nobody has attempted a takeover says volumes.
Maybe Google should buy Palm.
I still want an Apple Smartphone,and have for years since I had a PDA.
It was very functional even though it was a poorly made Toshiba with Windows Mobile. It’s only real problem was that the case was so fragile that it actually “racked” to the extent that the screen was permanently damaged while in my shirt pocket while I was carrying a box.
And it synced better with a Mac than it ever did with any Windows computer.
Don’t know if it was a coincidence but it seems that PDA’s with the Palm operating system tend to be made by companies that make their PDA’s with stronger cases.
Apple could do so much better, and I think if done properly, it could be another iPod. To be honest, a pocket Mac could, in my opinion, cut into
Mini and laptop sales, so…….
Palm has come out with a Windows smart phone simply to tell prospective buyers that it can make hardware that can run both operating systems. All the carriers are pushing the new Treo 700 now instead of the 650. I think Palm made a mistake here. It would be like Apple offering a Mac that has Windows pre-installed. The only one benefiting is Microsoft while hardware makers are left to struggle and compete in price wars. with each other.
Apple will come out with their own PDA/wireless iPod/phone or they will not depending on if it makes sense. Steve Jobs has said that once the company is performing well again that Apple can invest time and money in new devices.
Now is a better time than ever. =)