Rumor: HTC is in Talk to Acquire Palm
With the recent turmoil due to underperformed sale figures of both the Pre and Pixi smartphones , Palm’s stock took a big hit and fell to 52-week low of $3.65. That is nearly 70% off in the past 6 months. The market cap is down to about $700 M, which makes Palm an attractive target for acquisition.
Palm has made effort to broaden its distribution channels from the original exclusivity with Sprint. Palm Smartphones are available at Verizon, next they will come to AT&T and overseas markets later. But the financial outlook still casts many doubts for its survival.
Today, for the last day trading of the week, Palm stock surged based on takeover rumor. Taiwan’s Economic Daily News said that HTC had “opened discussions about an intent to acquire” Palm.
HTC is the major Taiwanese phone manufacturer that make some of the most popular smartphones such the Nexus One, HD2,… HTC smartphones are mainly running Google Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile OS.
Palm WebOS is a great operating system, however the hardware is a bit lack of luster to effectively compete with modern devices. Hopefully HTC bring more of its magic to the platform in exchange to a well recognized brand and the fact that Palm is the holder of many mobile patents, which might have a tremendous values our days.
[Via xchange]
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