Palm Takeover Expected This Week

[CozBoogie]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17704587/

NEW YORK - Nokia and up to three other potential bidders are interested in buying Palm Inc., which could be sold for some $2 billion as early as this week, a technology news Web site said.

Unstrung.com quoted unidentified sources close to the situation as saying Palm’s management preferred a private equity buyer. It speculated that Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners were among the private equity firms interested.

Another bidder for Palm, which makes the Treo smartphone and other handheld digital devices, may be Motorola Inc., the site said.

Shares of Palm, which have vaulted more than 33 percent this year on takeover rumors, rose on the news Tuesday. Unstrung said the company would likely sell for more than $20 a share. It had 102 million shares outstanding as of December.

Sources have previously told Reuters that Palm hired Morgan Stanley to pursue a buyer. Unstrung said that Morgan Stanley wanted to wrap up a deal by Thursday, when Palm is scheduled to report quarterly results.

Texas Pacific, Nokia and Motorola representatives declined comment. Silver Lake was not immediately available for comment.

“We make it a practice not to comment on rumors or speculation. We are focused on growing our business,” said a spokeswoman for Palm.

Palm has long been tossed around as a target, thanks to its popular Treo line of smartphones that hold thousands of personal contacts and appointments, as well as surf the Web and send e-mails.

Analysts, however, have said that the recent run-up in Palm shares may make potential buyers shy away.

An analyst in Helsinki said a bid from Nokia was unlikely.

“Likely buyer is a company which does not have strong offering of Palm-like products. Nokia does have an improving, good lineup,” said Evli bank analyst Ilkka Rauvola.

Nokia rolled out its E-series phones, aiming for corporate customers, last year and introduced several new models last month at the 3GSM trade show in Barcelona.

[Pibe38]

Well it'd be nice if Motorola took over, they are solid and from what I've heard have good support of their products. Didn't the Sprint Q get an update close after release?

They also replaced my H700 BT headset because apparently they version I had worked better with GSM and not CDMA and they sent me a CDMA version at no cost or issues.

[Malatesta]

Originally Posted by Pibe38

Well it'd be nice if Motorola took over, they are solid and from what I've heard have good support of their products. Didn't the Sprint Q get an update close after release?

They also replaced my H700 BT headset because apparently they version I had worked better with GSM and not CDMA and they sent me a CDMA version at no cost or issues.

Yeah I have to agree.

I mean, it's not really Palm's fault since Moto is so huge compared to them. But seriously, Moto has been one of the best manufacturers to deal with:

- 6 weeks after the Q is released we got a firmware update that fixed a handful of little bugs (connectivity issues, nothing major). Six weeks! That's a record in my books. Took Palm 8+ weeks to fix SMS on the 700wx...

- Sprint mis-printed on the box, saying the Q should come with a mini-SD and headphones. It doesn't! Just call up Moto and tell them that...and they'll send you for completely free a 512mb mini-SD card and headphones, no questions.

- Some of our batteries are 1+ year old, just call moto and they'll send you a new free one, don't even have to send it back

Now if we can just get official confirmation that the Sprint Moto Q will get WM6 like it's GSM version....

But seriously, I hope Palm and their engineers not only live on but are just given the cash influx and market power that they rightly deserve. The 700wx is an incredible device, it just needs more support and some hardware innovation

[SpeedDemon]

I sure hope that this would mean better service and faster updates for all Palm devices. I mean the only update so far for the 750 was the blackberry one.....