Before smartphones dominated the technology scene, cellphones and PDAs dominated the landscape. Palm (PALM: Charts, News, Offers) was the pioneer and the most dominant player in the PDA space. However the inevitable convergence of the two technologies left Palm, amongst others, in the dust. The first major strike against Palm was the Blackberry by RIM (RIMM: Charts, News, Offers), and the death blow is now being delivered by the Apple iPhone (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) and Google Android (GOOG: Charts, News, Offers). Yes, Palm did try to fight back and evolve itself into a competitive smartphone provider; unfortunately, its last hope, the Palm Pre family of smartphones didn’t fulfill its destiny and Palm may be running out of options.
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Now, who would buy a company on its death bed? Fortunately for Palm, there may be some interested buyers who want to break into the fast-growing smartphone space. Some potential buyers include: Dell (DELL: Charts, News, Offers) who dabbled with the Axim PDA and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: Charts, News, Offers) who acquired the iPAQ from Compaq Computer, Nokia (NOK: Charts, News, Offers) whose high-tech cellphones were outdated by the new breed of smartphones, Microsoft (MSFT: Charts, News, Offers) who never managed to gain a foothold in the competitive PDA and smartphone markets, or Motorola (MOT: Charts, News, Offers) who used to dominated the cellphone market.
More news about Palm:
- The Palm Pre Plus Creates a Hotspot — Your internet connection just went dead? No problem, the Palm Pre Plus from Verizon can be used to replace your Wi-Fi network in a flash.
- Palm: Pacific Crest Downgrades; Merrill Cuts Target To $5; Needham Fears “Oblivion” — Analysts weigh in on the fate of Palm.
- Palm webOS 1.4 update rolls out to Pre, Pre Plus, Pixi and Pixi Plus owners — Palm forges ahead with its software upgrade despite the lackluster performance.
Other stocks in the news:
- CF relaunches bid for Terra, tops Yara offer — Fertilizer maker CF Industries (CF: Charts, News, Offers) reattempted its hostile takeover of Terra Industries (TRA: Charts, News, Offers)
- Dow Chemical sell Styron to Bain for $1.63 billion — Dow Chemical (DOW: Charts, News, Offers) sold Styron plastics division to Bain Capital for $1.63 billion in an attempt to shed more debt and secured more cash.
- News Corp.’s Dow Jones to Buy Out SmartMoney Venture — News Corp (NWS: Charts, News, Offers) to buy the 50% remaining stake in SmartMoney joint venture from Hearst Corp.
Palm’s stocks appear to be climbing now. Some of their regained confidence may be attributed to the strong recent marketing strategies that are being seen across huge billboards along the freeway, large ads across bus stops, radio ads, and better friendlier commercial ads. More consumers are now recognizing the Palm Pre through these diversified marketing channels prompting more sales for the Palm Pre and Pixi smartphone units. Palm’s developer community is also beginning to show an noticeable and healthy rate of activity with a rise in quality application releases. The Palm’s 3D hardware accelerated gaming is also catching a lot of attention with titles ranging from Assasin’s Creed, Asphalt 5, and Need for Speed.
Heavyweight Game Development companies are beginning to release more and more high quality 3D software products through the Palm App Catalog. Meanwhile, small companies and businesses are taking advantage of Palm’s popular WiFi hotspot functionality or ‘Wireless Internet Routing’ in the palm of your hand.
Palm is great at innovation in my books. They’re the only ones around who are actively working with finding out what consumers want in a mobile device. They have the best customer service, and actually care about their existing customers.
This is a good news for them. Palm start this innovation, they should try harder to put themselves back in the market. It is not yet too late for them as long as they offer unique and better features than other phones.