
I was delighted back in the spring of 2010 when Hewlett-Packard announced it was buying Palm. I’ve been a fan of Palm for 15 years, but throughout its history, the company has always been hamstrung by a lack of adequate financial resources. With mighty HP behind it, Palm could finally reach its destiny.
I couldn’t imagine that 20 months later, after wasting more than $3 billion, HP would put Palm’s sole remaining asset, the webOS operating system, out at the curb with a “Free to a Good Home” sign around its neck. (I’m sorry, I simply cannot credit HP CEO Meg Whitman’s claim in an interview with The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky that we’d eventually see new HP tablets and smartphones powered by webOS. If HP meant that, it wouldn’t have let the webOS team scatter to the winds.)
But if it’s a sad end to the Palm line, it is somehow a fitting one. Palm always was a company that couldn’t buy a break.
Palm’s troubles started at the very beginning. Having failed to raise venture capital funding to get the original Palm Pilot manufactured and marketed, founders Donna Dubinsky, Jeff Hawkins, and Ed Colligan had to sell the company to modem maker U.S. Robotics in 1996. Almost immediately, U.S. Robotics turned around and sold itself to 3Com. It’s not clear that 3Com was more than dimly aware that Palm was part of the deal. It certainly clear that 3Com never had any idea of what to do with it.
Palm was forced to stop using the Palm Pilot brand in a trademark dispute with the Pilot Pen Co.
After founders Dubinsky, Hawkins, and Colligan left in a dispute over strategy, 3Com spun Palm into two companies, PalmOne, which made PDA hardware, and PalmSource, which owned the operating system. The goal was to license Palm software to third parties, but the only really significant licensee it signed was Handspring, the company started by Dubinsky, et. al. PalmOne (which later renamed itself Palm) struggled with constant management turmoil, while PalmSource struggled, mostly without luck, to modernize Palm’s increasingly creaky operating system.
Meanwhile, the crew at Handspring managed to turn the Palm into the first real smartphone, the Treo. Eventually, in a bity of financial judo, Handspring merged with Palm and the company regains the right to develop its own OS, which by then had been sold to Access, a japanese software company.
Alas, it was really too late. Money was as short as ever and drastic action was needed to save the Palm OS from hopeless obsolence (by this point, Palm was becoming largely an OEM of Windows Mobile phones.) In 2008, Palm got a $100 million infusion from Roger McNamee’s Silver Lake Partners and former Apple hardware guru Jon Rubenstein came aboard, eventually as CEO. The new team produced webOS and got it into the Palm Pre, but the hardware never won the accolades the software earned. It was a modest success at best and the money drain continued.
The HP acquisition was supposed to change Palm’s fortunes for good, but of course we know how that turned out. But given the soap opera history, the ending should hardly be a surprise.
Thanks-a-mundo for the post.Thanks Again.
wow, awesome article post.Thanks Again. Great.
Im grateful for the blog post.Thanks Again.
I truly appreciate this blog article.Really looking forward to read more. Great.
Say, you got a nice article post. Want more.
Thanks so much for the blog.Really looking forward to read more. Cool.
Im thankful for the article post.Really thank you! Much obliged.
Wow, great blog.Thanks Again. Much obliged.
I truly appreciate this article post.Much thanks again. Awesome.
I loved your blog post.Thanks Again. Will read on…
Major thanks for the blog article.Really thank you! Really Great.
Major thanks for the article.Much thanks again. Keep writing.
I quite like looking through a post that will make men and women think.Also, many thanks for allowing me to comment!
Really informative blog post.Thanks Again. Awesome.
Appreciate you sharing, great blog post. Keep writing.
I really liked your article.Really looking forward to read more. Much obliged.
Thanks for ones marvelous posting! I really enjoyed reading it,you may be a great author. I will bbe sure to bookmark your blog and may come backdown the road. I want to encourage you continue your greatwriting, have a nice morning!
Hey, thanks for the blog post. Great.
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’tappear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just wanted to saywonderful blog!
Thank you for great article. I look forward to the continuation.
Very neat article post.Much thanks again. Fantastic.
Hi there friends, fastidious piece of writing and fastidious arguments commented here,I am truly enjoying by these.
generic amoxicillin online purchase amoxicillin online – over the counter amoxicillin canada
A big thank you for your blog.Really looking forward to read more. Want more.
I appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Cool.
What’s up, just wanted to say, I liked this article.It was helpful. Keep on posting!
Im obliged for the blog.
Organic CBD oil is made from pure organic cbd vape oilhemp.
Fantastic blog article.Thanks Again.
Muchos Gracias for your article.Really thank you! Much obliged.
п»їivermectin on line sales ivermectin over counter uk
wow, awesome article. Awesome.
I really like and appreciate your blog post. Really Cool.
Enjoyed every bit of your article post. Cool.
Major thanks for the article. Great.
I think this is a real great blog. Keep writing.
Very good blog post.Much thanks again. Really Cool.
Very good article post.Really looking forward to read more. Keep writing.
Muchos Gracias for your blog.Really thank you! Fantastic.
Really appreciate you sharing this article post.Really looking forward to read more.
Genuinely when someone doesn’t know afterward its up to other visitors that they will help, so here it occurs.