Palm puts itself up for sale

So sad for Palm .... especially when we recall how she created the whole PDA market even Steve Jobs once believed his Newton could have been able to.

If I were Eric Schmidt, I would simply use some petty cash to buy out Palm to help turning the Android platform into real iPhoneOS contender.

waste of money if Apple bought Palm just wait a few months and they'll get all their tech guys for peanuts and the patents at the fire sale. Alas a great innovative company that lost its innovative way.

I just dug out my Palm lllxe and my Palm m500, which still work but no need to use them!!

Palm you could have been a contender!!

Well heck, for that price, I'll just buy Palm... I could probably do some good being the CEO of another company...

IF Palm owns any patents which Apple has violated (blatantly or otherwise), wouldn't it have made sense for Palm to sue Apple some time ago and get awarded loads of dosh, either by out-of-court settlement or by judge & jury? The first iPhone is nearly 3 years old, so enough time there to determine whether Apple has nicked Palm's patented ideas.

I know it could take years, but still...

Interesting read here (especially the positive comments):

http://jkontherun.com/2008/08/23/ryan-block-revi/

If Apple were to dial the first 5 numbers of Palm's corporate office phone number, Google would buy Palm so fast it would make your head spin. In fact I fully expect Google to buy Palm for the patent portfolio. I would be a good idea for Apple to preempt this, but it would just turn into a bidding war.

First of all, Apple absorbing Palm wouldn't be something new as Steve tried to buy Palm a long time ago, before Palm undertook IIRC the first of its many re-structurings (split software/hardware division before combining them again & so on). Palm rejected Apple's offer at the time, wanting to it alone.

If HTC does acquire Palm, it doesn't get leverage over Apple in the suit, simply because you can't defend yourself for breaching someone else's patents by acquiring new ones. Legislation/statute can be retrospective, but you can't back-date patent acquisition.

The other point is: what if all of Palm's combined patents still don't cover HTC for violating patents that only Apple holds? How is that going to help HTC? That would be one massive legal defence bill -- $1000 million ($200m for lawyers and $800m for Palm!!

Market cap < US$1billion. Just sayin'...

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=PALM

Bwahaha, Apple buying Palm is a good deal? It's a waste of nearly a billion dollars on crap technology. You need to stop spouting bull crap, this has been extensively covered elsewhere on the net already.

If Apple bought Palm I think it would likely be dissolved into the company. Many of the engineers at Palm were at Apple not to long ago as Rub brought them over. They may be out of work with Rub.

WebOS would be shelved and anything they liked put into iPhone OS, if there is anything. Apple may do it just to get those patents and keep them from HTC.

If I were running Apple I would likely do that and put Palm into support only mode for the remaining warranty period to protect my turf. It also may make Nokia's suit have less sting depending on the patents.