Shareholders urge Palm be put up for sale
Palm's third-largest shareholder on Wednesday urged the Sunnyvale company, which makes the popular Treo mobile device, to put itself up for sale, and recommended Apple in a list of potential buyers, reports SiliconValley.com.
It was the second time in four months that a major Palm shareholder has made such a suggestion, said the publication, an online extension of the San Jose Mercury News. In November, the company's fifth-largest shareholder also urged the company to explore a possible sale. Palm's second largest shareholder is expected to make a similar request soon.
According to the report, the latest push came from private investor Mark Nelson, who owns about 4 million shares, or 8 percent, of the company. In a letter to Palm's board of directors, Nelson noted that despite surging Treo sales, Palm is poorly equipped to dominate the smart-phone market in the future.
"Competitors are moving quickly in terms of product development and market penetration,'' Nelson wrote. "These competitors can potentially sacrifice profits in the smart-phone segment for the sake of greater market penetration.''
Therefore, he wrote, the company should "begin exploring strategic alternatives, including a sale of the company, while Palm is in the ascendant.'' Nelson went on to write that RIM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple would make good potential Palm buyers.
Apple has been credited with jump-starting the hand-held PDA market with Newton MessagePad, which it manufactured from 1993 to 1998. Since then, the company's interest in the PDA market has wavered.
While Apple continues to file PDA-relevant patent applications in the United States and Europe, company co-founder and chief executive, Steve Jobs, does not appear to be keen on the PDA market segment.
Speaking at the Wall Street Jounal
All Things Digital conference in the spring of 2004, Jobs stated that he was proud not only of the products Apple had shipped in recent years, but also the products the company developed by decided not to release. When pressed to elaborate, Jobs replied, "an Apple PDA."
It was the second time in four months that a major Palm shareholder has made such a suggestion, said the publication, an online extension of the San Jose Mercury News. In November, the company's fifth-largest shareholder also urged the company to explore a possible sale. Palm's second largest shareholder is expected to make a similar request soon.
According to the report, the latest push came from private investor Mark Nelson, who owns about 4 million shares, or 8 percent, of the company. In a letter to Palm's board of directors, Nelson noted that despite surging Treo sales, Palm is poorly equipped to dominate the smart-phone market in the future.
"Competitors are moving quickly in terms of product development and market penetration,'' Nelson wrote. "These competitors can potentially sacrifice profits in the smart-phone segment for the sake of greater market penetration.''
Therefore, he wrote, the company should "begin exploring strategic alternatives, including a sale of the company, while Palm is in the ascendant.'' Nelson went on to write that RIM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple would make good potential Palm buyers.
Apple has been credited with jump-starting the hand-held PDA market with Newton MessagePad, which it manufactured from 1993 to 1998. Since then, the company's interest in the PDA market has wavered.
While Apple continues to file PDA-relevant patent applications in the United States and Europe, company co-founder and chief executive, Steve Jobs, does not appear to be keen on the PDA market segment.
Speaking at the Wall Street Jounal
All Things Digital conference in the spring of 2004, Jobs stated that he was proud not only of the products Apple had shipped in recent years, but also the products the company developed by decided not to release. When pressed to elaborate, Jobs replied, "an Apple PDA."
Comments
Originally posted by Matthew Yohe
I still do not understand why there isn't a future in an apple PDA. Could someone fill me in?
There's not really a future in ANY PDA. The PDA market has been shrinking for years whilst the SmartPhone market has grown.
I'm not sure why Apple would buy Palm? I'm sure if they wanted to do PDA/Smartphone hardware they could do it themselves. They don't need the brand name. The Palm OS was sold off last year so they wouldn't get that and in any case Symbian is a much better OS. Buying Palm would be pointless.
Originally posted by Porchland
Makes you wonder what an iTunes phone would be like. Palm's Treo is a nifty, multi-featured phone/PDA, but the UI is very un-Apple-like.
Not just that, the OS is very un-Apple-like, Underneath, Garnet is a mess of an OS that should have been junked when switched from the 68K derived Dragonball CPU to ARM. Really, if Apple resurrected it's Newton OS it'd be a leap past PalmOS Garnet, not that that's likely. I don't know what happened with Palm's BeOS derived OS but it's a real pity that wasn't used.
Apple could put a new UI on top of Symbian just as Sony Ericsson did with UIQ on top of that and Nokia did with Series60 and would have a much better smartphone than anything Palm or Microsoft have.
Originally posted by Strawberry
I remember Steve also saying that the iPod would absolutely, positively NOT have video.
Did he really say never? Some time ago, I watched the presentation announcing the iPod photos, and what he said during that presentation was that the market and content wasn't ready for video on the iPod, so they started with photos. In that light, I think it makes some amount of sense
Originally posted by Alias789
What was it he said about flash players, I can't rightly remember?
I think he said that when the available stable of flash players was at about 128MB in capacity. Even if he did say never, I'm sure Appley had to relent from their strategy when they realized there was a pretty large untapped market that wouldn't pay what it takes to get the full sized iPod.
Translation: He'll introduce one at the next big show.
Originally posted by initiator
I don't think Apple is interested in buying Palm. I don't think they see the value. As others have said, they don't need Palm to build a smartphone or equivalent, or for that matter even a PDA. They have the technology inhouse. I mean, if you look at it, it's not such a big leap to call the iPod a PDA. It's close, and slowly getting closer. Look how much it has already morphed from a single purpose MP3 player.
q: what would be the main reason apple would potentially buy palm?
a: to get the rest of the BeOS (beyond the journaled file system, which they got pre-panther when they hired that guy -- i forget his name).
Originally posted by rok
q: what would be the main reason apple would potentially buy palm?
a: to get the rest of the BeOS (beyond the journaled file system, which they got pre-panther when they hired that guy -- i forget his name).
Palm don't own the OS anymore. They sold that last year to Access.
There's absolutely no technical reason they'd want Palm.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I don't know what happened with Palm's BeOS derived OS but it's a real pity that wasn't used.
Wasn't it originally intended to be PalmOS 6 before that project got derailed?
My Tungsten E2 may be the last Palm PDA I own. Right now it's hard to be optimistic about Palm's future no matter how I look at it.
Originally posted by sjk
Wasn't it originally intended to be PalmOS 6 before that project got derailed?
It was even released but AFAIK nobody used it. They're up to v6.1 now and still nobody using it. Now they're porting the API to Linux so it runs over a Linux kernel and you can still run old 68K apps. They're in a nasty place by the sounds of it.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Palm doesn't own BeOS anymore? I didn't know that.
http://palmsource.com/press/2005/111405_access.html
I presume since palmsource owned BeOS, it went to Access also.
YellowTab released Zeta a while back under licence from Palmsource. I expect that's still in place.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
It was even released but AFAIK nobody used it. They're up to v6.1 now and still nobody using it.
A stealth major release if ever there was one.
Now they're porting the API to Linux so it runs over a Linux kernel and you can still run old 68K apps. They're in a nasty place by the sounds of it.
When I read about the Linux porting awhile ago my reaction wasn't much more than "yawn, whatever".
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Palm don't own the OS anymore. They sold that last year to Access.
There's absolutely no technical reason they'd want Palm.
whoa, that slipped under my radar too.