14 DAY TRIAL // According to several recent reports, Palm might soon be acquired by rivals Nokia or Motorola, with sources saying that the deal might be closed before Thursday.
Aside from the two mobile phone manufacturing companies, two private equity firms, Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners are also interested in the Treo manufacturer.
Despite all this, none of the aforementioned companies could be reached for comment. Although dominant on the smartphone market for quite a long period of time, lately Palm's devices haven't been as much of a success mainly due to other manufacturers releasing similar or better devices. Especially after switching to Windows Mobile and partially dropping their own Palm OS, customers were less and less interested in the devices Palm had to offer.
The company will without a doubt be acquired by someone, the only question being which of the four potential buyers will end up getting the PDA manufacturer. Another interesting aspect is what the future of Palm handsets will look like.
If Nokia gets Palm, chances are that we'll be seeing a lot of new Palm-like smartphones from the Finish manufacturer. While their E-series devices do generally suit business users, Palm could definitely bring serious improvements to them with their expertise in productivity devices. The acquisition would also help Nokia penetrate the US market, where their Symbian OS smartphones haven't been very successful.
While the two mobile phone manufacturers battle over Palm, the company seems to be leaning toward selling to a private equity investor. Since according to reports Palm is going to be acquired in just a couple of days from now, everything should become clearer then.