Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

ZTE is also growing very fast. Recently passed both Motorola and Sony Ericsson on handset marketshare. Smartphone OS would be just what they need and they certainly have enough money to buy Palm.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

I didn't mean they don't have money to buy Palm. I was referring to Palm being steered by Elevation partner (which is a private equity firm), which may put out a price way above its fair market value knowing there are companies like ZTE out there to court (big pockets and wanting).

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

Palm as a company is way overpriced.

The only bits worth buying are the patents (depending how much are actually licensed).

Time and time again Palm have screwed up.
How many times have Palm restructured?

Palm will probably be sold for the fraction of the price.

If they are sold for the asking price then I'm afraid a few investors will lose alot of money (if they haven't already).

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

Palm's market cap has allready dropped below 900 million dollars.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

lets see, first there was palm.

then palm started licencing their palmos to third parties.

then said third parties starting to question the correctness of being in competition on hardware while palm was selling them the software, so palm split in two (palmone, palmsource).

next palmsource gets bought by access while palmone regains the name palm.

that palm is now the palm thats having trouble staying afloat.

funny thing is, palmsource had a new palmos ready back when microsoft first got into the pda business with pocketpc. But noone wanted to use it, as it was not backwards compatible with the existing palmos. And the reason there was that the existing palmos (garnet) had such a portfolio of third party software available.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

Actually, the internals of the Palm Pre Plus are probably currently unbeaten (beside of the screen, of course). It's the inefficient OS, webOS, that slows the device down. Try running some 3D games on a Snapdragon, and you'll get my point. Only when HTC decides to ditch that common snappy their hardware will have a shot at running such an inefficient OS as webOS.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

HTC shot them down. Now to the rescue... Lenovo???

http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/23/tech...palm/index.htm

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

I've seen plenty of apple fanboys (rabid), nokia fanboys (rabid), android fanboys (they seem to be somewhat milder) but not much of palm fanboys if at all. Do they not stray off from their herd or their numbers are really very small to matter? :)

It seems that not many people care about palm and will miss them if they just disappear.

disclaimer: I used to be a palm fanboy.

I was a palm pda guy (palm III, visor plus, sony n73, zodiac) before being heavy treo user (600-650-680)... then they turned me off when they took up (sold out to?) windows mobile and their treo development was left stagnant with rehashes after rehashes.

By that time other platforms were springing out (iphone) or coming onto their own (bb, as something more than enterprise devices) and I've moved on and never cared about Palm anymore.

Foleo didn't help.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

I like my palm pre, but I like my n900 even better. it'd be sad to see palm die nonetheless.
btw, I'd really like to see some touch stone-like charger for the n900.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

I wanted a Pre.. but the hardware felt too flimsy, and the only UK carrier was charging an arm and a leg.. Win for the N900, ...WebOS on the N900.. that would turn some heads.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

It is pretty close to my own Palm saga.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

HP are purchasing Palm for $1.2 billion, i did not see this coming
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/s...50&newsLang=en

HP Buys Palm
 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/hp-buys-palm/

HP certainly has the resources to push WebOS, but how long will it take? Even Nokia is running short on time.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

HP? Wow... if I had a million guesses, I still wouldnt have guessed that one.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

Not the best possible synergy, but at least HP should have deep enough pockets to fund Web OS development. I guess HP has decided to make serious effort in mobile space. HP got very nice price as well. Only 500 million above market cap.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

Well, they had a line of mildly unsuccessful phones and somewhat successful WM PDAs.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

hmm, webos powered ipaq? sign me up ;)

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

It'd be interesting if they can put WebOS out into slate form factors.

*Maker* knows how badly their slates need proper OS on them...

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

You beat me to it.

HP buying Palm... right when Dell has upped their mobile handset presence. To see WebOS continue... that makes me happy actually. I just hope a form factor comes out that I'd actually buy.

It's an odd match, but one I hope works out. And yeah... ysss. Didn't think about WebOS on their slates... now that, I'd kill for.

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

At least they got the motivation... they seem desperate enough (in that sector) ;)

But they lack focus in designing their products. They just assemble commodity parts and slap on loads of off-the-shelf OS and apps on top of them without coherence.

I hope they put the right person in charge of this.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Given that Nokia is bound to release a MeeGo tablet at some point, I'm not too excited. But it is nice to see WebOS stay alive.

Edit: and Win7 tablets aren't a total disaster. I can't wait to play some games* on them, but I'll probably see if MeeGo and Wine can do it first.


*Command & Conquer, Eufloria, you get the idea...

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Wow I did not see that coming. And great point ysss.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Actually NvyUs beat you all to this:

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=52

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Will be interesting to see what plans HP has for WebOS. For tablets? Should be. Would they license it to another makers?

Re: Palm struggling to survive
 

the character of HP have changed since their last change of CEO.

the previous was a dreamer, the current appears to be more of a organizer.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Yeah... I wonder who's the hotshot they gonna put to head this whole enterprise. Seems like a pretty huge undertaking to keep Palm afloat while integrating\cross developing with existing hp's mobile portfolio.

Btw, are you guys OK with getting slates 6" to 10" size with full-screen-only (non windowed) interface (like all 'smartphones')?
...or do you expect a 'divisible' screen management interface in those sizes?

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

I would prefer divisible (or some way to overlay one window on the other) myself mainly because if I get a tablet it would replace the role of a laptop for me. Though I'm thinking of getting an Android one if they put one out with the specs I'm interested in (or Meego).

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Screen management for me, please.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

I would like screen management on my N900, please... IRC + browsing, Simpsons + IRC, you get my point.

At this resolution and size, split screen would be no worse than running any of those tasks individually on my E71.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

If you want windowed interface in those sizes, that means a stylus-only interface.. otherwise there'll be significant screen estate (loss) devoted to window management (Borders, controls, etc).

IMHO slates in that size range cannot and should not be a direct replacement for note/netbooks... Yes, the larger screen size will automatically make us want to cram desktop-like multiwindows to view multiple apps... but when used in slate-mode, you will either interact with them with 2 thumbs or 1 hand (with the other cradling it).

Perhaps if it use a screen/antiWM like window manager in slate mode and switches to conventional windowing interface when 'docked' to keyboard/mouse :)

Excuse the musing... getting back to topic now....

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Again from Engadget:

"The word is that Palm's existing hardware roadmap is basically untouched at this point by this acquisition, but the good news on the HP end of things is that the company sees webOS as a "prized asset," and they intend to "scale it across multiple connected devices." That sounds like tablets to us, and HP didn't beat back that assumption. On the Palm hardware end, Jon is very fond of saying "scale," referring to the money and manufacturing resources at HP's disposal, but he also says that he sees Palm working hand in hand with HP on devices. "

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

dumbed down screen management i think.. most things run full screen but with a guesture to window it, then move things around by simply dragging anywhere over them, multitouch resize, and guestures to minamise and close and returm to full screen. with some way to drag and drop files between windows or drag files into apps ie to make playlists

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

I guess HP just acquired a whole bunch of patents... ;)

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

$1.2 Billion mistake. Unbelievable they paid that much for a dead company walking. They could've gotten Palm for probably much less than half that in 4-6 months.

Did Carly Fiorina come back or something? I thought they'd paid her enough millions of $$ NOT to come to work and foul things up she would stay away...

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Like evilJazz said, patents PATENTS!!! and WebOS :D

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

I think it just depends on the functionality you want from having several windows. I don't expect window management like a full sized PC has. But I do for example, want to be able to play a video and watch it while working on something else on the tablet. Or to be able to say have a PDF open while say working on a small report.

For that I don't think we need a full windows management system complete with borders, individual controls for each app, etc.. So stripped down windows management that still enables some limited windowing would work for me. For example, hiding all menu and buttons just so you see the main information (the article for a PDF or the video itself without all the unnecessary menus). Though that would be tricky to create.

Edit: Interestingly I heard on the radio that HP wants to join the smartphone fray..

WHY?

In between Android, iPhone, Maemo/Meego + Symbian with QT compatibility, RIM with Blackberries, and Windows 7 Phone Series how many more operating systems can developers feasible support.

Unless they plan on integrating WebOS with their own flavor of Android (like SenseUI for HTC devices).

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

WebOS UI on MeeGo might make more sense. Or WebOS layered on top of Android. At least then they would be able to leverage the development and apps on either platform in addition to their WebOS specific functionality, rather than strike out alone.

WebOS outside of the US is not doing well, and it hasn't done that well *in* the US either.

There are too many OSes now... some consolidation would seem sensible.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

i'm predicting apple and hp suing each other in six months.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

Thats the only thing that HP was after the patents that Palm owns. The patents only that palm owns as a corporation is worth way more than 1.2b. And the reason they said WebOS a prize.
Why do you think Apple being so nosy, did not do jack when Palm was screwing around with their proprietary iTunes for Palm pre. As Apple's nature why did they not drag them to courts? because Palm owns so many patents that Apple is utilizing, with which it can take down the whole company.
I do not know why but I see a very dark cloud over Apple for this whole month. Prototype being public, MS backing HTC with the patents it owns to held out against Apple's law suit and now HP another prosporous company owning rights over Palm's patents, which Apple has been using, for ex. the touch screen dial pad and the download patterns inside OS had been patent owned by Palm since 1987.
Ohh man 2010 is going to be a hilarious, same time nasty year.

Re: HP Buys Palm
 

This could potentially be good news for the Qt ecosystem as well since WebOS can run Qt apps.