In case you missed it, the PDA world got a bit of a "woah" when PalmSource was bought out by Access (the people behind the NetFront browser). Now it turns out Palm bid make a bid as well (reports Business Week). What's more interesting from a Symbian point of view is that "...major US and European handset makers jumped into the bidding, and drove the price too high." So who would that be? Nokia? Sony Ericsson? Motorola? It might be speculation, but if one of them had accquired PalmSource, what might that have meant for Symbian?
Did Nokia Bid For PalmSource?
Wow. As a former Palm user, this is fascinating. Would Nokia have bought out PalmSource and then broken the company down, thus eliminating a competitor? Could the Nokia 770 have seen the light of day running PalmLinux? Anyone interested in a Treo running Series 80?
Let the wild speculation begin!
For my $0.02 worth, LG recently became a PalmSource licencee(?), so my guess would would be that they put in a high bid. Alternatively, Moto used to have quite few dealings with Palm for processors and what not - maybe they wanted to do away with the cut down versions of UIQ on the A series?
I'm guessing as major stakeholders in Symbian you could probably rule out Nokia and SonyEricsson, although Sony did have a Palm thing going on PDA wise. I'm guessing one of the fence sitters of the mobile world suddenly saw an oppertunity to get hold of a team of developers and an OS that can plug straight into their phones in an attempt to make a UIQish platform based on PalmOS.
That said I thought it bizzare in the first place where Palm's hardware and software sections went their sepparate ways, unless they were thinking in an "well it's working for Symbian ditching Psion to Psion Technologix and releasing a phone based OS".
To me Palm put me in mind of the Apple of the PDA world, generally better than the Microsoft opposition though not really with a solution to tempt me away with what I have now. Now if Palm move to Windows as the article suggests then I think Palm will really decrease in market share as they become "Yet another windows PDA maker"TM, there are already plenty of those and I can see Palm being lost in the mass against the cheap generic manufacturers, in the same way that Apple would be like another Dell if they were to use Windows.
Too bad THAT didn't happen. A Symbian shareholder buying the Palm brand would have given Symbian a jump start and some press coverage in the US.
Certainly they would have turned out a product with v9.1, branded it a Palm, brought a whole slew of developers and added a whole branch to the Symbian Ecosystem.
The Americans (and I am one) would have bought the newest "Palm" phone and been none the wiser.
Too bad!
Maybe David Potter was making bids too! 😉
I'd be suprised if Noia of Sony Ericsson woud have bid, but you never know. The major US handset manufacter is presumably Palm, and my guess for the European one would be one of the smaller companies.
I think dgduris point is well made though. If Palm had gone with Symbian as their base OS 3 or 4 years ago there could be a very different picture now. It makes you wonder what might have happend in Palm could have bought a shareholding in Symbian.
I suppose theoretically there's every chance that Palm (the hardware company) might look at all the alternative OS's. We know there'll be a Windows Mobile Treo, so you never know what might still happen.
Rafe, the quote onm US and European was from Palm's CEO so I think we can discount him saying his own company drove the price up! Also - what's was there to stop Symbian buying PalmSource for the Engineering base in Asia?
Interesting article and not surprisingly its yet another one about mobile OS's that completely fails to mention Symbian. However it does explain why Palm source was sold for much more than its share value which surprised me at the time.
I'm not totally convinced that Palm will announce a Windows Mobile based Treo any time soon. It all seems to be speculation to me! Palm's CEO has been very careful not to rule in or rule out any OS and as he was keen to buy Palm source he must still have an interest in the Palm OS which would be severely weakened if they supported another system.
Well my previous post was completely wrong 😊.
However it seems that Motorola were the US handset maker bidding for Palm source according to this report. They even thought they had the deal in the bag by having an offer of $17.25 per share accepted only to be usurped by Acess offering $18.50 per share 2 days later. Motorola were of course not happy with this and are seeking an $8.7 million breakup fee from PalmSource.
My question is why were Motorola interested in Palm souce at all? They currently produce Microsoft, Symbian and Linux devices so why throw something else into the equation? Prehaps like Acess they were more interested in the Chinese linux connection than the Palm OS itself.
two reasons. 1) is China Mobile Soft and their Linux Feature Phone expertise, the second is 2) China Mobile Soft and their penetration of the Asian feature phone market.