Palm close to sale, does this mean MS won the war?

by Grant Robertson Mar 20th 2007

Palm was once king of the mobile landscape. The Palm Pilot made reality what a decade of electronic organizers and ill-fated Apple Newtons never could; A practical handheld computer to store the junk from your head. Once Palm established the market Microsoft stepped in with Windows CE, early versions of which were laughable in comparison to the Palm. Three name changes, infinite version numbers and the integration of the mobile phone saw Windows CE grow up into Windows Mobile, and take the lead. It's an age old story of Microsoft takeover by market-share and, now Palm is only steps away from being ~~swallowed whole~~ bought outright by one of a host of other industry players.

John Dvorak explains that either Nokia or Motorola are likely to drop the hammer on a buyout of Palm sometime soon, and at a price of around $20 a share. eWeek reports their could be as many as 4 bidders fighting behind the scenes, although speculation runs wild as to who the two not named Nokia or Motorola may be.

Tags: John dvorak, JohnDvorak, Palm, Palm for sale, Palm Pilot, PalmForSale, PalmPilot, Windows Mobile, WindowsMobile

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gardiner Westbound said 9:07PM on 3-20-2007

The Sony Clie, which used the Palm OS, was discontinued in June 2004. I have one. It is an excellent unit, but considerably less useful without OS updates.

james 42 said 9:53PM on 3-20-2007

WM is nothing special. Palm lost because they did not innovate and delivered unreliable products. It is ironic that the Clies were consistently better then anything Palm put out themselves.

Atanas Boev said 10:21AM on 3-21-2007

And why exactly would Nokia want to buy Palm for? They don't need PalmOS phones, neither WinMo phones. Neither smartphone expertise.

asurroca said 10:51AM on 3-21-2007

Is that even a question anymore? I thought Microsoft won the war years ago. Between Windows Mobile smartphones and the Blackberry, I haven't seen anyone actually carrying a Palm Pilot in like 5 years.

james 42 said 12:12PM on 3-21-2007

@Atanas Boev, I was wondering that too.

@asurroca, yeah, spot on.

Sramana Mitra said 9:05PM on 3-21-2007

My 2c: http://sramanamitra.com/blog/727

Former Palm User said 9:27PM on 3-21-2007

Palm surrendered when they released the last batch of stinker products. I bought a Palm-TX and had to return it when it would not run anything that used any kind of large database. All the latest palms are seriously lacking in main (RAM) memory, which causes application crashes and problems. Palm is the only one to blame.

Bryan said 6:37PM on 3-22-2007

that's like saying "ford close to sale, does this mean chevron won the war?" it makes no sense. palm is solely a hardware manufacturer and microsoft doesn't even compete in that arena. a more accurate statement would be HTC won the war. palm has released basically one product (the 700 series) in the last 3 years. HTC on the other hand built that product as well as released about 15 other devices. i say good riddance.

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