Palm Said to Put Itself Up for Sale; Bids May Come This Week | Hacker News Reader

Palm Said to Put Itself Up for Sale; Bids May Come This Week

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Whoever buys Palm is getting a real prize. First of all, they get the entire Palm patent portfolio, many of which Apple is infringing upon. Palm's been doing the smartphone thing longer than almost anybody, and they've built up quite a bit of IP along the way.

Palm also has sales channels with the three biggest US carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint), as well as carriers in Europe like SFR and O2. Bell (Canada) gets tossed in for flavor.

Finally, there's WebOS. While WebOS launched rather immature, it's been developing incredibly rapidly. The OS in its current state is incredibly capable, and a joy for both developers and users. It's more usable than Android, more capable than the iPhone (even after OS 4), and blows Blackberry out of the water in almost every respect.

What Palm's missing is solid hardware and enough runway to get developers online. They won't have all their developer tools up until this summer, and it's questionable whether they've got enough cash to get past fall.

I hope that whoever acquires them doesn't kill WebOS. I'm an extremely satisfied Pre owner, and I dread the prospect of having to jump to Android or the iPhone (shudder).

Oddly, they don't get the remnants of Be and BeOS (whatever those might be by now). Be was owned by the other half of Palm that spun off to sell the Palm OS.

Is WebOS honestly that good? The last I heard that I was paying attention to was jwz giving up on his for performance reasons (http://jwz.livejournal.com/1108212.html)

I know there's a lot to like about it; I loved (in my brief exposure) the cards metaphor, and I imagine that development could be quite nice, but have they solved the issues he refers to?

[disclaimer: I have had a brief play with a Pre, but you can't get them in Australia. I would have considered getting one].

JWZ had a Pre when WebOS was kind of half-baked. They've made significant gains in responsiveness since then, and solved most (all?) of the things he complained about.

That being said, the system doesn't feel as 'instant' as the iPhone or a fast Android phone. However, you can often get things done faster than competing platforms because the workflow is so streamlined.

Moving to a 1Ghz processor like the Snapdragon would probably bring responsiveness up to parity with other systems.

That's encouraging, thanks.

One area where WebOS is still miles ahead of even iPhone OS 4 is notifications. I was actually a little stunned that Apple didn't even address the issue last week: Notifications in iPhone OS are incredibly primitive; they exist only as modals with no history. You get one, it interrupts what you're doing, and if you get ten, you only see the last one and there's no way to review the other nine.

WebOS, on the other hand, displays notifications peripherally and in parallel, it consolidates and organizes them by application, and even has two levels of hierarchy for initial and persistent alerts. It's an order of magnitude more powerful, yet elegant enough that it would be at home on any Apple device.

"You get one, it interrupts what you're doing, and if you get ten, you only see the last one and there's no way to review the other nine."

Not the case, in my experience. Generally, they pop up one after the other, right when you're about to tap on one, and then you have to either dismiss each one separately, or open the application responsible for the most recent one and hope for the best.

Notifications on iPhoneOS are the single worst user experience, and I can't understand why Apple hasn't yet fixed this ridiculous and annoying problem once and for all.

Couldn't agree more. The last 2 years, I've used iPhone, Android, and for the last 2 weeks, WebOS (Pre).

WebOS is limited in some ways but the entire package comes off well for the end user. I find it a refreshing alternative to Apple and Google's platforms. It would be nice to see WebOS survive.

An alternative to buying Palm as patent arsenal might be to go the other route: buy it and open it up more...maybe see if NZ is serious about eschewing patents and move the HQ there. Sure, that's dreamy talk, but I hope an acquirer thinks a bit more outside the box than just accounting for patent war. Even though Android is open, its complex. WebOS seems to strike a nice balance.

As far as needing to jump platforms again. It seems that Verizon and a few smaller distributors are in process of pushing out the excess Pre/Pixi inventory. The reason I bought my Pre is because Verizon was giving them away, 2 for $49 (plus $29/month data plan for 2 years). For what its worth, Verizon is locked into providing support for this new set of users for the next 2 years.

With the Newton trumping the Palm in date, I would assume, barring Apple transferring those patents, that Apple would have some low level patents in this department, but given the age (and my age too) the Newton may have been over 20 years ago now so the patent period may be past.

I doubt there are many buyers who would want to enter the smartphone business as the underdog with a custom OS at this point.

One big exception would be RIM, whose own software is looking increasingly dated. They might see Palm as a way of getting a whole new OS on the cheap, together with the talent and patent portfolio to go with it.

I would love to see RIM adopt WebOS—the current BlackBerry OS is a disaster, especially in the apps layer. How would this work out with the QNX acquisition, though? I don't know enough about QNX, but is it primarily the kernel?

I think Dell or Lenovo are unlikely simply because neither has previously shown any interest in developing their own operating systems. Both are probably more comfortable selling Windows Mobile/Android handsets. HTC makes sense as a company with experience developing their own software but I wonder how WebOS fits into their crowded line-up of Android & Windows Mobile devices. I wouldn't be surprised to see RIM get involved. They seem to be struggling to modernize BBOS. Hasn't hurt their sales too much yet but you gotta figure eventually it will. They're probably one of the companies most capable of quickly absorbing Palm. Time is a major factor given the growth of Android, continued strong iPhone sales and WM7 lurking around the corner. I could see RIM getting squeezed if they don't make a move.

HTC is one of the obvious buyers, but they are so in bed with Google and Android, I wonder if HTC could pull the trigger on that one. On one hand, HTC is trying to position itself as a top tier manufacturer, independent of carrier branding. On the other, it has Android and WinMo handsets already... is it going to try to add WebOS to the mix?

I doubt it. If HTC goes for Palm, it will be a patent play.

However, what if Google bought Palm for WebOS interface? I've always seen Android's interface as a little clunky. And Palm has some great design people... so if you married Android and Palm, then you'd have a better chance of unseating the iPhone. If it was just HTC, then I fear you'd just get a jumbled mess of handsets.

A Google/Palm marriage makes to much sense to actually happen:)

Has anyone considered that Apple is also a potential buyer, if just for the patent portfolio?

Given how aggressive Apple has been in the mobile phone patent space as of late, that would actually make a lot of sense.

I wonder if it would be worth it for HTC for patents etc.

Given the bargain price of Palm right now and how much it could cost fighting a legal battle for years, HTC could probably end up saving a lot of money simply by buying Palm right now.

Apple was deterred enough by Palm's portfolio that they made little noise even as Palm launched their platform with features clearly covered by Apple patents. Engadget had a really good look at both arsenals last year: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-dept...

If HTC suddenly had those onboard, I think we'd see Apple drop their suit in pretty short order.

I am never a big fan of Microsoft.But i think it make a lot of business sense if they buy plam.It is a lot better competing in that market than fight google in search market.i think the only company that can compete with google in search is facebook!

WebOS is certainly better than Windows Mobile. Microsoft has utterly failed to make a good mobile OS. Maybe they should just buy one.

The problem is, they wouldn't have the vision to isolate the solid WebOS development team from the rest of MS. They would tangle it up in departmental meetings and company-wide politics and cross-market product ties ('search your phone emails with Bing Mobile Edition Professional Basic!'). And then, besides being the underdog, it would also suck.

I think Microsoft is understandably hesitant to buy another creative cellphone design shop after the "synergies" failed to materialize after their acquisition of the maker of the Sidekick, Danger Inc.

Microsoft buying Plam may not make a whole load of sense given they have an exciting new mobile platform coming on stream soon. It's a similar play to them buying Yahoo to compete better with Google in the search space.

I don't see exactly how Facebook competes in search, all I see it as is an increasingly spammy social network that I could easily live without. Google on the other hand, is indespensible. The very sight of Bing makes me want to punch the monitor (when I'm not using my own PC).

Hmm. I could see something great coming out of HTC buying Palm. Palm seems to make decent hardware (with some cool features like the builtin mobile hotspot). HTC makes wonderful hardware. I also hear WebOS is very nice, though it hasn't gotten much traction.

I'm not sure exactly what they'd do, but it definitely has a potential. I can tell you one thing: I'm currently on the fence between getting the 4th-gen iPhone and a Nexus One. If I could get a Nexus One with a builtin mobile hotspot (and no extra monthly charge for that), I'd do it in a second, and I'd even be fine with switching to a network I like less like T-Mobile or Verizon.

Honestly, if HTC hardware meets WebOS, I'd be in heaven. I'm a Palm Pre owner, and the hardware is really weak. The OS is exclusively gesture based, which I find as really intuitive, and combine that with HTC's hardware prowess, and you've got a really good device.

Maybe Adobe will buy them and give Flash a true mobile outlet (and maybe use some of those patents to work out a deal with Apple).

I remember when palm was worth more than 3com, even though 3com owned 95% of palm.

Frankly, RIM should buy them. The blackberry is getting woefully outdated and WebOS could help it jump into the 21st century.

What about Nokia? They smartphones also sucks, and they have already sued Apple for IP infringement.

There aren't enough words to describe the happiness I'd feel if HTC bought Palm and made more WebOS phones.

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