Palm: Increasing Chance Company Will Be Bought, Says ThinkEquity [Barron's Blogs]
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Matt Hickey
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September 24, 2006
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An acquisition by Motorola would probably be a very positive move for both companies. TRZR coming?
I have to question an Apple acquisition because many of the Treo products are running Windows Mobile. Several colleagues have used both Palm O/S-based Treos and Windows-based Treos, and largely prefer the Windows Mobile environment. I have difficulty imagining Apple buying a company and continuing support for a Windows O/S (or even Palm O/S). With hundreds of users and thousands of third-party applications, it would be difficult to phase out support for several years. I think Matt makes some good arguments comparing Apple and Palm though. But Apple also may still be a little sour on mobile pda platforms after the disastrous newton offering (which was a good product for its time but came way too early for mass adoption).
Lets look at this for a moment. Let’s ask the question what is there of value in Palm for Motorola or for Apple:
- Product design: both Motorola and Apple have enough smarts in this area, as has Nokia, RIM and Sony Ericsson. In addition, players like HTC mean that companies can now buy in ‘iconic’ design a la T-Mobile.
- The brand: the Palm brand lives on though it was built on machines made six years ago based on a software platform and user experience that Palm has led the last rights to as it continues its Windows migration. The Treo brand is a valuable competitor brand to RIM, and may be attractive to aggresive entrants into the US marketplace like Nokia or one of the many hungry Chinese(both Taiwan and communist China) players Ningbo Bird, BenQ, Lenovo
- Software: Palm has burnt the biggest asset the UI with its sale to Access, however the company does have useful experience for a Chinese buyer in localisation for carriers and a shiny new Dublin centre for European market entry
If you want to know who is most likely to buy Palm, look East.