A Palm Inc. buyout could be finalized by Thursday this week, demanding $20 or more per share, according to sources close to the situation. Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) is seen as the leading vendor bidder; while Palm's management is said to prefer a private equity buyer.
Morgan Stanley -- the banker that the PDA pioneer has been working with to explore its options -- wants to wrap a deal by the 22nd, the day that Palm is due to report its third quarter results for its 2007 fiscal year, according to the latest word from sources.
"They really want to get it closed on the 22nd," a source told Unstrung on Monday morning.
As I said, it appears to be an Apple fansite. I probably found it initially while reading up on the iphone.
go back couple of years (around 2004-2005 timeframe) and it was easy to find a lot of comparisons between Win-Mobile and Symbian/etc which were trying to talk down Symbian compared to Win-Mobile. The truth was exactly the opposite, and I think still is.
Anything from MSFT is usually a steaming pile, so I'm with you on this one.
Talking about AAPL I think they may be interested in PALM as AAPL is new comer to the world of telephony, something that PALM has already done.
However the rate at which PALM stock is going up, it may not find any buyers because it wont be a value play anymore. Seems like LR and message board posters are doing a good job of keeping PALM share-price in a upswing.
Maybe so. But I don't think Apple will attempt to buy them out, regardless of the stock price.
Flam, When you write Symbian apps for commercialization (and not for fun) I will take you a bit more seriously.
Funny you say, you are a NOK customer. So sounds like you endorse Symbian OS, otherwise you would have switched.
Well it is not unusual to expect new competitor such as APPL to talk down Symbian (if I were to believe you, which I don't). All you have to do is go back couple of years (around 2004-2005 timeframe) and it was easy to find a lot of comparisons between Win-Mobile and Symbian/etc which were trying to talk down Symbian compared to Win-Mobile. The truth was exactly the opposite, and I think still is.
Talking about AAPL I think they may be interested in PALM as AAPL is new comer to the world of telephony, something that PALM has already done.
However the rate at which PALM stock is going up, it may not find any buyers because it wont be a value play anymore. Seems like LR and message board posters are doing a good job of keeping PALM share-price in a upswing.
Gabriel, NOK has equity stake in Symbian alongwith other large OEMs. So I am not quite sure if I agree with your comment about NOK not liking to pay license fees to Symbian.
About Linux in internet device that NOK is going to ship for WiMAX makes sense as it is a larger form factor device (closer to laptop than to a smartphone). As one approaches laptop/PC style range, less needs to be removed from a computer grade OS such as Linux and less customization needs to be made to the OS to fit it into internet device such as N800 etc.
Considering that they are missing estimates by a billion dollars for Q1 and are going to lose money in the handset business, i think we can probably scratch MOT off the buyer list for Palm.
Flam you must work for MSFT or some NOK competitor. Please provide your source of "Nok thinks Symbian is lously". In fact, Symbian is lightyears ahead of all other mobile OSs. Does Symbian have room to improve? sure. Anyone who thinks they have the perfect solution is kidding themselves.
Wrong - I'm a NOK customer and have written Symbian apps for fun.
The Symb reference comes from some Apple fansite which included comments from readers in Europe after the iphone was announced.
I think I know what you mean. I used to think Palm was washed up (I’ve never owned one), but I keep meeting people that are fond of the brand… even with Windows Mobile.
Good point about RIM, but look at it another way…
RIM has a market cap of $24B and P/E ratio of 93. NOK has a market cap of 98B and a P/E ratio 22.
The rewards of getting it right in the enterprise segment are attractive.
I think Palm is largely a 'pro-sumer' device not well loved by corporate types -- especially IT staffs. RIM is much much more popular in the corporate world. From some figures published by PiperJaffray, RIM outsold Palm 7m to 2.3 m in CY2006. Palm's quarterly handset unit sales have been flat in the 600k neighborhood since the second half of 2005.
I thought the following comment in one of the ARSTechnica forums today was pretty humorous:
"About 4 or 5 years ago I took some money from sales of Palm software I had written and invested it equally in several hundred shares each of Palm, Inc. and Handspring. Palm proceeded to change its name to PalmOne and spin off PalmOS, then did a *reverse* 1:20 split to buy Handspring, then renamed to Palm, then bought *back* PalmOS, then sold off the PalmOS to Access, then licensed the "Palm OS" back. I might have the chronological order a bit off, but that's the gist of it.
"As a former developer I had a lot of faith in the company and their business model. But in my opinion Palm's revolving door of CEO's probably comprise one of the biggest groups of inept executives in the history of modern U.S. corporations."
Gee, no wonder everybody is falling all over themselves to buy this thing.
I've heard that Nokia believes that Symbian is a really lousy OS, and it needs to be replaced.
It might not like paying the license fees, but what could Nokia replace Symbian with short- or medium-term?
I know it already uses Linux for its N800 web tablet device – the one it’s going to put WiMax inside (but, curiously, not 3G) and, I guess, ship off to Sprint.
Flam you must work for MSFT or some NOK competitor. Please provide your source of "Nok thinks Symbian is lously". In fact, Symbian is lightyears ahead of all other mobile OSs. Does Symbian have room to improve? sure. Anyone who thinks they have the perfect solution is kidding themselves.
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