HTC Walks From Palm Bid, Will Lenovo Step Up? 97
MojoKid writes "Earlier in the month, it was reported that Palm was being shopped around. At that time, two of the main potential suitors were HTC and Lenovo. HTC obviously felt like the best fit. Lately, HTC has shown that it has a penchant for creating fantastic hardware, but it has to rely on Google and Microsoft for software. It seemed as if buying Palm would give HTC the power they needed to move ahead as a standalone unit, pairing HTC hardware with the WebOS mobile operating system. Apparently, that's not going to happen. Based on a new report out of Asia, HTC has declined to place an official bid on Palm, leaving Lenovo as the only other potential buyer at the moment."
Re:How many incompatible platforms today, sir? (Score:4, Informative)
Do we really want more incompatible software "platforms" than acronyms in our alphabet soup? Does anyone have the courage to stand up and say "compatibility requires talk on standards"?
I'm not seeing how your comment applies. WebOS uses rich HTML applications on top of Webkit. So anything that runs on it can easily be made to run on the iPhone and Android. Palm's recent forays into OS and software development have been very standards compliant and interoperable.
Re:Good on HTC (Score:3, Informative)
Two words: "Palm Pilot"
For a long time, EVERY PDA was called a Palm Pilot, they pretty much defined the category.
Now Lenovo has Palm in the palm of their hands ...
Gut Feel Says... China. (Score:2, Informative)
Palm will be sold only for the brand name, though the patents, WebOS & such will go with it.
It takes years to establish a new brand and a buyer like Lenovo could launch an Android based Palm in short order.
And even though Lenovo is incorporated in Hong Kong, it is effectively based in Beijing and is 41.5% owned by Legend Holdings; Legend Holdings is based in Beijing and was founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (the Chinese government), and is 100% owned by Chinese-controlled operations: 36% the Academy, 35% what appears to be an ESOP, and 29% China Oceanwide Holdings.
PDAs/smartphones or their successors are going to be ubiquitous, and there are reasons other than direct sales profit for a company like Lenovo to want to dominate this market, since their own associates are probably not in the good graces of, say, Google or other U.S. companies that control public e-mail services or other password-protected services that enable private freedom of assembly and speech. I'm not sure Google and Android's main developers are dumb enough to Lenovo introduce un-vetted code back into the official Android Open Source tree, but maybe they are; and even if they aren't, Lenovo can still modify the source code and "release" it to a public that doesn't want it, and/or make modifications at the hardware/firmware level, and still can put enough money behind the Palm name to gain control of a big enough chunk of the worldwide market to get what the Chinese government is after.