FORUMS
PRICEWATCH
VIDEOS
HP Buys Palm For $1.2 Billion
Just two weeks ago, Palm was up for sale and there were potential buyers from HTC as well as Lenovo bidding for the company. Well, today, from various news sources, it seems the HP would be the new owner as it buys Palm for a massive $1.2 billion.
Palm has a new owner, the Associated Press reports, and it's none of the suspects previously rumored.
Neither RIM nor Lenovo will be putting Palm in its pocket. Rather, it's computing giant Hewlett-Packard, which is snapping up the company in an all-cash transaction valued at about $1.2 billion — $5.70 for each outstanding share of Palm stock.
That's a healthy premium over the $4.63 the stock closed at Wednesday, valuing the company considerably higher than the $781 million it was worth at the end of the Wall Street trading day.
It's premature to say how good of a fit Palm and HP will be, though both are Silicon Valley names with plenty of history. HP was actually once a major competitor of Palm's. During the pre-smartphone PDA era, it made a series of well-regarded Windows CE-based handhelds that competed with the Palm Pilot line, offering big innovations in those days, such as large color screens and Bluetooth connectivity.
And believe it or not, the HP iPAQ PDA line is still being manufactured and sold. HP markets a pair of smartphones under the iPAQ label as well, neither of which I've ever seen in real life — which might offer some insight into why the company would buy Palm.
Source: Yahoo! News
