

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war - sdfx
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/16/hp-bought-palm-after-a-five-company-bidding-war

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buster
My guesses:

    
    
      A - Lenovo
      B - Samsung
      C - Google
      D - HTC

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barredo
I would say C was Dell. All five hardware makers.

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buster
The reasoning for my guesses: C and D are said to only have interest in the
Palm patents. This makes sense for Google, which may have no patents at all in
this area, and HTC, which may have not as much as the competition (and with
the background of the Apple lawsuit).

A and B are said to be interested in both, technology and patents. Lenovo only
recently started to get into this business with android phones. It could make
sense for them to switch to WebOS. Samsung does Windows Mobile, Android and
recently Bada, a linux based operating system. I think, it makes sense for
them to build on the existing huge knowledge in this sector and the already
existing apps/customers/developers, as Bada just recently launched and didn't
get traction yet. Huawei would make sense too, but they are not as deep into
the mobile phone business as the rest, i think.

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jacquesm
What about RIM?

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apphacker
Doubt it, RIM already has their own operating system, although it may be that
D is RIM.

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tewks
It is incorrect to dismiss the possibility on that ground: RIM has the worst
smartphone OS from either a usability standpoint or from an application
development standpoint.

They've got major catching up to do; internal development doesn't seem fast
enough. We're nearly midway through 2010 and the closest to a decent browser
that they've delivered is a few leaked images.

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tdmackey
To speculate that they would be interested just because you don't like their
OS and think their development team is too slow is also incorrect.

I will agree that their OS is lacking in many areas compared to many of the
newcomers in this space, but that doesn't mean they run out and buy another
failed phone OS for a whole lot of money in exchange a few features their
rapidly growing team could implement or a smaller acquisition like their
purchase of Torch Mobile could deliver. RIM's main focus is also more
enterprise customers than consumer and the feature set demands of their
customers are a little different.

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SoftwareMaven
I think saying WebOS failed is completely off-base. From everything I've read,
WebOS was a very successful operating system. Rather, the company around the
OS failed.

From a historical perspective (not sure if it is currently true), Palm's
customer base would have lined up well with RIM's, too.

