If we believe the word on the street, the days of Palm may be counted. The Palm Pre was late to the smartphone game and apparently cannot the repair damage the company has suffered.
Palm Pre Plus
The company is reportedly working with Goldman Sachs and Qatalyst Partners to find a way out of a financial dead end. The options on the table are a sale of the company, a cash infusion or a licensing deal. HTC was recently rumored to be among those interested in acquiring Palm as the Palm’s patent portfolio could mean a solution to Apple’s patent infringement suit against HTC.
Palm seems to be more and more trapped between Apple, RIM and Google and the question how Palm could stay relevant. Palm recently extended its Pre and Pixi products to AT&T to get access to more customers, but it is widely believed that it was a mistake to launch the Pre with Sprint. Palm’s CEO recently noted in an interview that he would not do the same deal with Sprint again and favor a shorter exclusivity and sooner exposure to a larger carrier instead.
Palm’s fate appears to be in the hands of bankers and advisors at this time. But given Palm’s history, it would not be too surprising if the brand faded away entirely. Palm Computing was originally a division of U.S. Robotics, then turned into a subsidiary of 3Com, and eventually spun off in 2000. The company the split into a hardware division called PalmOne and software company that was called PalmSource in 2003. PalmOne then renamed itself to Palm and PalmSource was acquired by Access Systems in 2005, which sold the Palm OS source code back to Palm in 2006. Palm’s brand is about as confusing and diluted as it can be and it is unclear what value it truly has.
Palm dominated the handheld market with its Pilot series in the pre-connected devices era, when PDAs had no wireless capabilities. Invented by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, the Pilot pioneered handheld computers and was the first successful device of its kind – if we forget Apple’s Newton adventure. But like a stubborn child, Palm resisted the move to wireless capability initially. However, Palm was among the first companies to offer a smartphone when it acquired Handspring and the Treo product line in 2003, which had been created by Hawkins and Dubinsky.
While Palm’s decline is a story of underestimating new market and consumer trends, it has been one of the most significant pioneering handheld manufacturers. The Pilot series initiated a trend of devices that eventually created a path to PDAs that merged with cellphones. Today, Palm is still one of the very few companies to offer PDAs without cellphone connectivity (Zire, Tungsten series), which remain the most recognizable Palm products to date, even if there is an extensive line of Treo smartphones.
The Pre and Pixi series as well as the company’s hopes on webOS never caught fire and failed to help the company reinvent itself. Palm will remain a pillar of the IT industry and its ability to become more mobile. However, imagining a world without Palm in the future may not be too difficult as its role in today’s IT world is negligible and not relevant anymore.
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