Wall Street seems to think that Palm’s “Pre” phone and webOS signal the rebirth of the company.
Okay, let’s play along and assume that Wall Street actually got something right for a change.
Palm has a current market value of $669 million – and that’s with PALM up 36% today on the day-after “Pre” hysteria.
Apple’s current market cap is $81.2 billion, they have $28+ billion in cash on-hand, and are a debt-free company.
In other words, Apple could buy Palm this afternoon with petty cash. In fact, maybe that’s what Palm and Elevation Partners – and Wall Street speculators – are really shooting for: a buyout by Apple or some other company.
Apple would buy Palm in order to absorb a would-be competitor and/or gain access to certain patents and technologies and/or to prevent another company (Microsoft, RIM, etc.) from making the acquisition.
So, should Apple buy Palm? Let us know below and also in our “MacDailyNews Poll,” located near the top left of all pages.
Apple should buy Palm when the stock tanks when Palm misses its own shipping deadline for this “Pre” phone. The stock should be around $1.50 after the sell-off and then Apple can get it on the cheap and keep the one or two morsels that it can add to the iPhone.
I’m wondering how 1) other companies keep churning out phone after phone with touchscreen, multitouch, accelerometer, app stores, and a long list of etceteras all copied verbatim from the iPhone and Apple has done nothing about all this. On the other hand, Apple has been slapped with patent suit after patent suit for pretty much everything. And 2) how does Palm get its shares up 36% on a phone that won’t hit the market until at least half a year or more and Apple delivers breakthroughs to market again and again and shares keep going down and down and down…
Can some tell me what the bleep is happening here?
HELL NO! Why waste the money? Palm will be out of business in a couple years. Or if I’m wrong, they’ll be so irrelevant that it won’t matter. At that time, all 23 of their users should switch to the iPhone.
The only reason Apple should go through with it is so they can say,
“We have Palm in the… palm of our hands.”
For $700M, I’d do it for the laugh.
$669 millions that’s still a nice sum of money.
What would Apple get out of this, beside eliminating a very small competitor?
Put that money into developing and promoting iWork for Windows to slowly remove Office grasp on businesses. Srsly, Office is expensive and bloated, 90% of businesses don’t need all that crap. But they are brainwashed to follow the rest of the world and install this crapware.
iWork ftw!
The only reason Palm made any strides is because of Jon Rubinstein. What’s to say he wouldn’t pick up and leave after the acquisition?
Nope. I’m in favor of Palm as competition. I’m in favor of a decent phone like the Pre being available in South Dakota. The iPhone isn’t.
Let’s see ummm facebook integration into contacts??? IS that the big deal? Apple could probably settle out of court, or even shrug off a lawsuit from palm if they just stole the “idea” which doesn’t sound copyrightable (is that a word??:) anyway, for a lot less than 6.75 million
Business 101: The only reason to buy a company is if they have something which your company lacks. This means IP usually, but sometimes other resources figure in as well like personell/plants etc..
The general wisdom is that if your company has everything they have (or a reasonable equivalent), you should instead “compete” them out of existence. To do otherwise is just to postpone the inevitable collapse.
Microsoft is the best example of this. They buy up ideas and products that they can’t themselves develop because despite what they say they couldn’t innovate their way out of a paper bag. This doesn’t work forever especially if you have a strong competitor that you can’t buy out. Eventually one runs out of money to do this also as each purchase is usually terribly inefficient dollars and cents wise.
Palm has nothing that Apple needs/wants and nothing that Apple doesn’t have in spades or a better idea about.
Not this crap again…
No I don’t think Apple should buy Palm. They paid less for Next!
I think Microsoft should buy Palm for 2 billion.
What Palm has over Apple…(what Apple could get out a buy out)
– Developers with over a decade of mobile device experience (just because they work for a company that has a mixed track record doesn’t mean they all suck)
– In roads to corporate accounts (sales people with years of dealing with their customer book would be worth acquiring for Apple to grow not just smartphones, but get corporate accounts for Macs too)
– Support teams for mobile devices (Palm must have lots of experience addressing problems with mobile devices, an area where Apple lacks experience)
– Cross platform experience (Palm has used Palm OS and Window Mobile in their phones – Apple won’t ditch OS X for the iPhone, but integrating with non-OS X systems is an asset too)
– Brand recognition (MDN readers will likely deny this, but there are people out there who would be more comfortable buying a Palm device than an Apple one. If they knew their favorite Treo was now the iPhone 4Y or whatever, then they may relax and allow themselves and others they influence to buy iPhone)
– Good corporate synergy (Remember, before the iPhone, we loved Palm – they have innovation in their not-to-distant past and would likely flourish in the Apple echo system)
Riim should buy Palm.
This product would be a better fit for the slot currently occupied by the (sh*t)Storm. Riim could buy Palm with cash on hand also.
The more I think of it, this new product from Palm is almost the equivalent of an otherwise un-noticed Gazelle on the African plains, pouring gravy on itself and trotting up to a pride of Lions.
What I meant by that (and forgot to get explicit about) is that a buyout might indeed be what was on the minds of the venture capitalists that invested in Palm.
While the engineers might have been thinking they were going to take over the world with a new platform, perhaps the investors were just hoping for the huge jump in the stock and a quick sale and massive profit.
poor, poor elevation partners…
I hope nobody buys palm. There are too few companies around that are not dull boring dinosaurs, and to have palm eaten by Apple is just as bad as by Microsoft or any of the brain-stem driven rest of them.
I can see why some observers might be confused into thinking that Apple would be “turning into another Microsoft”, since some Apple evangelists (like those here at MDN) seem to be stuck in a Microsoftian worldview of “buy out the competition so there isn’t any.”
Apple doesn’t work that way. Two companies I can think of off the top of my head that they’ve bought (PA Semi and the company who invented the touch-sensitive technology) were purchases which filled in gaps in Apple’s technology portfolio, and which have allowed them to offer new and unique features for their products.
So, my response to the title question, “Should Apple buy Palm?”
In short: no.
In long: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO…
(…joke stolen from Zero Punctuation’s review of Spore at The Escapist)
M$ is the one who should buy Palm, not Apple.
Apple doesn’t buy companies to extinguish them, M$ does.
If Palm had revolutionary technologies that
Apple doesn’t have, then maybe Apple would consider it. But, they don’t. The Pre is an untested, unshipped possible competitor and anther player in the smartphone market. If I was RIMM or Nokia, I would have my ears perked up, but Apple is waaaaay ahead, and we’ve seen nothing yet from them as far as the iPhone is concerned.
Cut and paste whiners will be excited about something other than cut and paste when the next hardware version is out.
Apple’s only problem is the fact that they are so far ahead of what consumers can even imagine…they have to trickle out their hardware and software updates to make things look even and competitive. Being a fly on their wall in their R&D;labs would be an incredible experience. They trash more than others invent combined.
I have to say that M$’s new SoundSmith is going to generate some consumer interest…if only it was done the Apple way…if it does work, it is cool. It’s really just one feature competing with a powerful Logic core consumer Garageband. Cool idea, if it works.
Hellz no – waste of money for a product on its deathbed.
The only–ONLY–thing Palm has going for it is the “Palm Pilot” label that people use at the drop of a hat. “Yeah, I used to have a Palm Pilot,” they’ll say when talking about a PDA or similar device.
Other than that dinosaur of eleven years ago, Palm has virtually nothing going for it. My company stopped developing for the platform two years ago, and even with this new and “mind-boggling” VAPORWARE announcement, we’re NOT going back.
I’ve been a Palm user for years, but what a stupid idea. WHY?
The way a once fantastic line of products and OS have been neglected and virtually abandoned is practically criminal!
Let Palm die the death it deserves.
One, where are these articles about Wall St thinking Apple should buy Palm?!?
It’s idiotic if anyone thinks Apple should buy Palm. The only company possibly thinking of buying naPalm is MS. Heck, they just agreed to pay Verizon over $500M to put MS Live search on their network, why not just buy Palm for around the same amount of cash. Then they can have WinMo and LiveSearch on all those HTCs and Palms and other phones, instead of paying Verizon.
Apple should buy Circuit City and only carry Apple products in them.
This makes as much sense as buying Palm.
Apple should buy Circuit City and only carry Apple products in them.
This makes as much sense as buying Palm.