We hear rumors about large device manufacturers buying Palm every odd week – and most of them are bogus. After all, why should a manufacturer give up on its successful OS?
TamsPalm reader Robert now shared an interesting theory:
Oh let me add one more company to my list…Qualcomm. They make many of the components for phones already, if they bought Palm then they can make the phones cheaper because of this.
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Yes I do think they have the money. If you open almost any cell phone you’ll see something thats Qualcomm. Would they want to? I’m not sure. It would make sense as would the other companies I mentioned, but I only hear rumors of companies that already have OS’ that are doing well.
It may be a little-known fact, but QualComm’s BREW operating system is used more widely than you think. It has even made inroads into basic smartphones – but is not really suitable for these devices.
For QualComm, webOS would be a smash hit. It is flexible and can adapt to various screen sizes easily; it drives data usage due to its “webby” nature, and is pretty powerful too.
Thus, QualComm buying Palm would make sense – the question is whether they have the money.
What do you think?
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It would actually be a pretty bad idea, I think. Qualcomm entering the fray as a device producer would backfire as they’d be alienating their chipset customers, now turned competitors. If someone were to buy palm, it would be a company either already in the market, or one completely out of the market, so that they don’t sabotage their own core business.
medevelenemy I see what you’re saying but since they make a lot of the chips already for a lot of phones I don’t know if it’ll matter. Look at Sony and Samsung, they make TV and phone screens and they also sell phones. Samsung makes a lot of the components in many phones as well. I guess hardware is pretty invisible unless you open the phone and the OS is there in your face, but would that really matter? The phone companies already know Samsung and Sony make components as well as phones.
Hi med,
I didn’t mean them becoming a device manufacturer – them being an OS vendor would be more than enough!
Tam
Tam Thats basically what I was thinking of initially too. The funny thing is that Qualcomm makes a lot of the innards of phones so it would almost be theirs but without them actually making it. They’d be the Intel of smart phones.
I think Samsung is probably a more realistic possibility. They could embed WebOS into lots of different devices easily – for example, given they are already embedding Yahoo widgets into their TVs, why wouldn’t they include a proper ARM processor (they are probably already using ARM anyway), and then have a WebOS variant as the interface. You could have a single WebOS remote for all your CE equipment. You could use it to control you TV, Stereo, and could use it on your Mobile/Cell phone.
Sony makes sense as well but I think they would be more resistant to acquiring such a key piece of software – plus they were burned by PalmOS in the past. However, Sony does like proprietary standards so they might be tempted. The Sony/Ericcson alliance might be a problem, though.
I wouldn’t count HP out either – they have wanted to become more consumer focused and this would help them. However, I have a tough time imagining Palm flourishing under them.
A CE company would be a good fit because, if those companies don’t use and establish their own general purpose OS, then, in the next 5 years Android will likely fill the gap instead.
I can agree with Samsung, even LG. Sony no because if they wanted to do an OS I would see them doing their own. Any of the electronic companies that have had phones (Hitachi/Casio/NEC, Sanyo/Panasonic).
HP I don’t think so. I was watching a recent video with one of the heads and he said they didn’t really want to get into phones. They see themselves doing more tablets and such. Now Dell on the other hand has shown interest in doing a phone so maybe them.
Who will buy them if that option actually comes around, who knows.
Hi,
consider Samsung out of the game – they have just stuck millions into their bada fund!
Tam
Tam this is true, but isn’t that for lower end semi-smartphones?
We can go on forever thinking who would be good to buy Palm and we may be wrong still. Who knows maybe kyocera. Or maybe some rich person who just wants to get into the phone business. I just hope its a company that takes good care of it and does well by it. WebOS is a strong OS and with the right people with good ideas, it could become a very strong company. I’m not saying that the present CEO is doing a bad job, he did build a good OS. Just if I were him I would have licensed out the OS to other companies but with hardware boundaries like Microsoft is. I would have right away tried to get it into as many cell companies as possible and also put the OS on tablets and maybe e-book readers. I think if this was done Palm would be in better shape now…but I could be wrong too.