struggle smartphone maker Palm is reportedly looking for emptor . If true , it could signal that the company and its investors have given up the effort to re - set up the open up mobile gadget manufacturing business .
Palm is working with Goldman Sachs Group and Quatalys Partners to delineate up a buyer , according toBloomberg source , who say HTC in Taiwan , and Lenovo Group , in China have “ looked at the company . ”
One technology analyst advise that Palm has little to offer some of the bruit buyer , and that thesmartphonecompany is more likely to end up being bought by a small-scale Chinese or Amerind gimmick God Almighty looking for dramatic gain in home and external markets .
“ What does ribbon bestow to the table that HTC and LG do n’t have ? ” enquire Jack Gold , principal sum of J. Gold Associates , a technology enquiry and consulting firm . “ Palm has limited channels and a diminishing client basis . ”
ZTE or Huawei are more probable buyers , he says , because they “ leverage both the Palm brand and its engineering science for both domestic and international market expansion ( they already have earpiece operations domestically and are attempt to expand worldwide ) . ”
Palm ’s chief asset is the innovative webOS mobile operating system , which has received good reexamination from users anddevelopers . The software has a Linux meat and an embedded version of the Webkit HTML and Javascript render railway locomotive used in several popular entanglement browsers , include the mobile version of Safari on Apple ’s iPhone . With Webkit as the app environment , developers can create app in HTML , Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets , rather than down - level , and proprietary , programing languages .
Palm ’s main investor is Elevation Partners , with 30 per centum of the store , a swelled investment betting that webOS and phones such as the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi would re - launch what had once been a successful brand . But Palm ’s most recent earnings weredisappointing , with the company shipping far more headphone than Sprint , and more recently Verizon , were actually sell , even with bigprice cuts .
medal CEO John Rubenstein recently said that if the company had place the original Palm Pre , which go away on sales event in June 2009 , with Verizon before the newsboy set in motion the Android - based Droid earphone from Motorola , Palm ’s aspect would have been dramatically dissimilar .
By late September 2009 , the stock price had reached its high head , $ 17.39 , but then began sliding steeply . At daytime ’s conclusion Friday , April 9 , it stood at $ 5.16 per share .
The scurvy cost could attract someone else who was either looking to deform around the company , or to use webOS as the basis for its own mobile platform looseness . The latter architectural plan would mean continuing the competition with the successful Apple iPhone , Research in Motion ’s BlackBerry , the grow mien of Android - based phones , and Microsoft ’s re - energizedWindows Phone 7 OS . presently , RIM and Apple are the U.S. market share leaders , with well-nigh two - thirds of the grocery between them , harmonize to Gartner . Palm has less than 5 percent share .
concord to Bloomberg , Palm , Lenovo , HTC , and both Goldman and Qatalyst declined to comment .
