Elevation's Take on the Palm Deal? 5%

I could also forsee HP keeping "Palm" around for a while to woo the consumer/prosumer line and keep iPaq for the corporate line. I would not at all rule out "Palm" being eventually phased out completely.

Also, it'll be interesting to see if this event will soothe any of the ruffled feathers with the carriers & developers that have been burned by Palm over the past few years (basically ever since the Fooleo debacle).
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== "...The two Silicon Valley companies announced Wednesday that the deal
== will see HP pay $5.70 for every Palm common share and certain
== preferred shares. Also included in the $1.4 billion price tag are payments
== for additional preferred shares, warrants and employee restricted stock
== units..."

That makes the deal approximately $5.70 share if 240,000,000 is the share count.

== "...The holders of Palm's Series C Preferred Stock will receive
== the Common Stock Consideration on an as-converted basis. The
== holders of Palm's Series B Preferred Stock will receive
== aggregate cash consideration of $328.3 million, without
== interest, based on the existing liquidation preference of the
== Series B Preferred Stock. Each outstanding warrant will be
== converted into the right to receive $2.45 in cash, without
== interest, for each share of Palm's common stock subject to the
== warrant..."

They get 101% (plus or minus) of the $8.50/share initial Preferred B share thingee, exactly what they paid + buyout profit for their second Preferred C share thingee ($5.70-$3.25 or $2.45), and $2.45 profit for every warrant they exercise. And they lose money for every common share they bought straight up (like the ones at $16.25).

Second, here is Dennis Gartman's take on "the surprise buy-out offer of Palm by HP. The short interest in Palm is enormous, and those who are short find themselves scrambling to cover, sending the price of the shares to a premium over HP's cash bid, when it is rather clear that no one else will be willing to buy Palm's clearly inferior technology."

I don't know who bought shares at $16.25, but they've had a very expensive education.

The fact that you don't think he knows how capital markets works, doesn't make him stupid. It makes you a prick.

Nokia's been invited to an orgy.

But they can't figure out how to pull it out of their foreskin.

Nokia's going away. Hey, cheap real estate in Finland ahead!

Lessee...what's a good ID to use and a good discussion field to pursue?...

Ah....flower arrangement!

[note, however, that the outrageous buyout price for Palm - as crazy as the PalmSource one - remains good fodder for discussion until at least July! HP management should be ousted over this one, IMHO - crazy lack of financial responsibility!]

Nonsense. webOS is real and is close to being ready for prime time. It can dovetail perfectly with HP's product line and will serve to differentiate them from everyone else that is just offering Android. Apple is the only other company that has its own phone OS that is capable of scaling up to netbooks and tablets.

The PalmSource deal was bzarre. This deal isn't. Of course, HP could have waited until the stock price was in the $1 - 2 range (likely within 2 months), but had they done so too many other companies would have kicked the tires at Palm, risking a bidding war, where "auction fever" hits and PalmSource-level mistakes get made.

FJH

What a mistake.

Wrong again.

There was no bidding war. Palm went out soliciting (begging for) bids like a low rent hooker. Most companies played hardball, realizing that with Palm about to implode this quarter since by July its stock price could no longer continue to be propped up artificially. (The manipulations of the Palm stock over the years have truly been breathtaking to even the most jaundiced market observer.)

HP is wealthy and decided to lock up Palm's assets now rather than wait for a better price but then have to compete with a motley collection of minor league suitors. The risk of waiting was that a competitor like Nokia could have got ACCESS Fever and done something insane like the (now moribund) company that bought PalmSource for five times what it was worth a few years ago. Nokia could easily have paid double what HP did, so $1.6 billion now was an intelligent, calculated business decision.

You can continue bashing Palm until the cows come home, but that's not going to change the fact that they have intrinsic value - specifically webOS - that is huge to a company like HP with the means to develop and bring a stable of webOS powered devices to market.

Palm survived long enough to find a Sugar Daddy. In some ways, they get the last laugh and you don't get the twisted satisfaction of seeing them go bankrupt. HP now needs to immediately weed out the large number of useless managers at Palm and install their own people to oversee development, to make sure that the webOS team doesn't get fat and lazy now that they're no longer having to fight for their lives every day.

I'm happy to see Palm survive. Hopefully HP will show the PalmOS user base and developers a lot more respect than Palm did over the years. If they don't, Apple and Google's minions are going to eat HP alive with its webOS initiative.

FJH

What is "serious"?

Company X offers $500 million and is turned down. So what? The fact that there were other bidders was known. The other bidders were just lowballing Palm and circling like sharks that smelled blood. HP plucked Palm out of the water with a better price. The competition got greedy and lost out on obtaining a tremendous asset at a good price.

whether you like it or not.

How. Odd.

HPQ has a gajillion UNIX developers (and Android/Linux developers) in-house. They could have bought User Interface people for a piddling amount compared to the Palm buyout and had literally EVERYTHING Palm has to offer in webOS.

There is NO WAY that webOS is ready for devices other than the Pre/Pixi - no device drivers, no flexibility, nothing. It's going to take a MASSIVE redesign and reprogaramming effort to get it ported onto a non-Palm device.

I think this purchase is going to rank right up there with The Biggest Corporate Mistakes.

A billion dollars for nothing more than a User Interface - insane and DUHmb.

Ridiculous. webOS can scale easily to larger devices. As does Android. As does iPhoneOS.

DUHmb is thinking that throwing "a gajillion UNIX developers" and some "User Interface people" together will get you a functional mobile operating system any time soon. How long do you think Google has been working on Android? 4 years. Last I checked, Google had a few pretty smart "UNIX developers" and "User Interface people" working for them. For a few years, in fact. And last I checked, Google also had a little bit of money in the office cookie jar. And still it took them 4 years to get Android to the (not fully developed) stage it is today.

HP currently has no mobile OS and needed to get into this space NOW - not in 2014. Buying Palm for peanuts gives them an OS that rivals Android and webOS and gets HP into the game IMMEDIATELY. To not recognize that HP just made a brilliant investment is DUHmb.

You're reaching, hengeem. You can do better than this. Bring your "A game" next time if you're going to try to criticize the HP deal. Any way you look at it, buying Palm was a good move - especially for a massive, diverse company like HP that can leverage its resources to get Palm's IP into some quality devices quickly.

FJH

iphone os = mac os x scaled down. Still, in order to support higher resolution displays, it required some substantial development effort by apple.

webos has been around about a third of the time as iphone os, so while webos may be scalable, it won't be a simple task to port to a higher resolution device, but it will require some substantial work.

HP should immediately dump 320x400 and 320x480 and make 480x800 (or 480x854) @ 3.5" the new bare minimum.

Having just experienced a horrendous past few days of some buggy apps, a hard reset, scattered contacts due to an unwanted Facebook contact sync and an epic fail trying to restore Android Market apps to my Droid, I'm ready to find a STABLE, mature platform from SOMEONE not named Apple with a decent physical keyboard. Come on HP! Otherwise, I might end up with a Droid 2/Nexus Two whenever that comes out and might go mad in the process of trying to deal with Android's growing pains.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro

Yes. The days of HandEra 240 x 320 hacks, CodeDiver, NYDITOT Virtual Display, pixel doubling issues and other "fun" stuff are over. Modern platforms need to adopt to ALL users - not vice versa like in the good old days.

Having just experienced a horrendous past few days of some buggy apps, a hard reset, scattered contacts due to an unwanted Facebook contact sync and an epic fail trying to restore Android Market apps to my Droid, I'm ready to find a STABLE, mature platform from SOMEONE not named Apple with a decent physical keyboard. Come on HP! Otherwise, I might end up with a Droid 2/Nexus Two whenever that comes out and might go mad in the process of trying to deal with Android's growing pains.

Sprint Centro 2 is calling your name. $99 on eBay. You KNOW you need it. Don't resist, son.

By the way, have you seen the HTC Incredible yet?

FJH

I have an unlocked Centro (global edition) with an AT&T SIM and it feels like plasticky crap compared to my Sprint Centro 2. The GSM Centro case creaks and flexes every time I hold the phone and voice quality is horrible. The soft touch coating on the Centro 2 makes it feel like a solid phone. And 128 MB RAM is not too shabby given how tiny PalmOS apps are. $99 for a BRAND NEW Sprint Centro 2. Try it. You'll never want to go back to your Verizon Centros again.

I'm still debating whether or not to add an HTC EVO and use it for mobile hotspot, Web and multimedia and leave the Centro for email (Chatteremail rules!), text messaging, PIM and PalmOS apps. The Centro browser is so primitive that lugging around an EVO might be worthwhile. Another option would be an iPod touch, but I don't want to be dependent on leeching a Wi-Fi signal every time I want to use the browser.

That Incredible is sweeeet indeed! But I wish it was a tad less plasticky and there are some reports of signal strength/voice quality woes. I'm going to see how this all shakes out before I jump hastily to another Android device. Besides, I'd really like to have something with a 4" AMOLED screen and a slide-out keyboard (Droid 2 perhaps). I really like what HTC has done with addressing some of the glaring deficiences of Android with Sense but I worry about ever seeing a 2.2+ update for any of these non-stock Android devices.

I hadn't heard those reports. With the huge number of Android handsets coming out this year you're almost certain to find one that you like within 6 months. But hopefully HP will be announcing a high quality webOS phone before the end of the year.

FJH

P.S. Hope I wasn't too hard on our little buddy hengeem. These are difficult times for Palm bashers.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hewlett-packard-palm-pre-phone-webos,10325.html

To lack even basic features that the dumbest of dumbphones have had for 5-10+ years such as a voice recorder app, voice dialing (BT or otherwise), removable memory card support and a programmable voice mail password is just pathetic in this day and age.
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SeldomVisitor wrote:
Not only will hengeem/SeldomVisitor disappear from Palm commentary, but commentary entirely - out with the old, in with the new!

This a good time to fade to black.

Buh bye!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yna9FIlV03Y

Giggle.