Palm Selloff Rumors

Shortly after Palm's quarterly results were publicized, with markedly downsized figures, Bloomberg business news reported that Palm is looking for buyers.

In the Bloomberg report, persons close to the company say that Palm Inc. is already seeking bids and talking to such companies as Taiwan's HTC, China's Lenovo Group, Cisco and Research In Motion (RIM). Palm is also considering licensing their webOS, a decision that sounds a little too familiar to when they farmed out their PalmO.

Palm's success with its PDAs and PalmOS handheld platform has won it entry into the smartphone market, but it has been fighting a seemingly losing battle for its share. The Linux-based WebOS and Palm's Pre and Pixi phones have provided some competition. However, the smartphone pool is shark infested, with the likes of RIM/Blackberry, Apple/iPhone, Nokia, Microsoft and Google/Android in the mix. A recent market study shows some of the statistics.

CEO John Rubinstein told Fortune that much of the Pre's tepid reception was due to its launch, saying that if the Verizon release of the Droid and Pre had been flipped, Palm's quarterly reports would have been much improved.