Round-up on Palm buyout rumors

[Alexander Turcic]

PalmAddicts has posted a helpful summary of the latest Palm company buyout rumors.

OK, first of all there is the question of whether Palm needs to be sold: probably not, but a shot of energy, vision and cajones in the management team wouldn't go a miss and this shareholder action may be the boot in the backside that they need. Bottom line is that this question can get kicked back and forth for a long time to come, what's more its an emotive area so don't expect a consensus soon.

If the buyout rumors pan out, I would hope to see an influx of genuinely cool Treo successors for us and our children.

Related: Palm stock surges after takeover chatter, Major Palm investor urges sale of the company

[Brian]

It looks like this one is still going strong. Gizmodo just posted this story based on this story at Personal Computer World (UK).

As a longtime Palm OS devotee and Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 owner, I'd love to see this come true. Combine all of the recently revealed Apple patents/patent applications (wireless ipod, accelerometer, gaming tablet application, mobile me, integrated sensing display, multipoint-touchscreen, gesture interface for a tablet, and my favorite, a chameleon patent and "Morph" trademark), and it's pretty obvious Apple is working on a revolutionary tablet/portable computing device. They also need to get into the wireless phone space as their competitors and wireless carriers are starting to offer wireless music download services that will threaten the iPod/iTMS model. I think the two companies would be a good fit.

[Laurens]

There's absolutely no basis whatsoever to this rumour. The "evidence" basically amounts to this:

• Two major shareholders are urging the sale of the company.
• Apple and Palm are in close proximity.

This particular quote is indicative of the whole flaw behind the thinking:

Apple's Ipod boom can hardly be sustained unless it can head off competition from PDAs and smartphones that can pack music players along with a host a other functions.

Yeah, right! If the iPod's success proves anything it is that people want dedicated devices, not Swiss Army knives.

I don't see why Apple would actually want to buy Palm. They can build the hardware themselves or hire HTC to do the grunt work. They don't need Palm's expertise for this. Now if they'd bought PalmSource a few months back that would've been logical.

[Alexander Turcic]

Slashdot picked up the story:

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl...59207&from=rss