Could We Be Seeing A Palm Phone With Android?
Wait, what? Didn’t Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein say that the company was doing well enough on their own and had a strategy to spring them back into prosper? A rather interesting story popped up today from that folks at Bloomberg stating that Palm is looking to sell its company to a lucky highest bidder.
Three unnamed sources report that the company would be opening talks as early as this week with at least two manufacturers getting their checkbooks ready to dive in: Lenovo and Android’s biggest proponent HTC. Reps from all parties involved declined to comment on any of these reports – which will rightfully be pinned up as a rumor – but that in itself makes me believe there’s some truth to this.
Huawei could also be a strong runner for the American phone and software manufacturer, though they weren’t able to comment any further on this particular manner due to company policy.
“Palm still has quite a good brand in the U.S. market, and some strong technology, so you can do something with it,” said Frank He, a technology analyst at BOC International Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong. “The shares have gone down a lot and the company may become attractive to anyone looking for a turnaround play.”
What could this mean for Android? With an acquisition from a foreign company, one might assume that increased American presence under their umbrella – yet presumably with the same brand name – could be a strong factor in increasing their smartphone presence on our side of the pond. With HTC specifically, a Palm-branded Android phone would make a lot of sense: it’s not like Palm was always running their own Operating System on their devices and it would bring the traditional candy-bar form factor that Palm made famous to the Android family.
Oh, and don’t forget that HTC and Apple are at each other’s throats right now and that HTC could use Palm for more firepower.
On the other side of the table, Lenovo is finally getting its feet wet with their first Android phone – the Lenovo LePhone – and they could certainly do with some increased market penetration. Buying Palm would help their smartphone business grow in America as we’re starting to see their PC game blow up (in the good way).
And this is only the beginning. If all of this remains true, many more companies – abroad or otherwise – could find themselves deep in the checkbook war for ownership of Palm and – assuming it isn’t Apple or Microsoft – Android could find itself on a new and unlikely phone. As soon as more on this story develops, we’ll be right on top of it to bring you the juicy (hopefully Android-related) details.
[Thanks, Bloomberg]