Business
HP won Palm in six-company bidding war
Palm reveals that Hewlett-Packard was just one company that hoped to acquire Palm for its intellectual property and the WebOS--and that it almost lost out to another company.
Hewlett-Packard landed Palm by raising its bid following interest from other suitors after intellectual property and a potential licensing arrangement for the WebOS.
The proxy statement, which sparked a good bit of discussion, provides an interesting read on how HP landed Palm. Simply put, HP almost fell short of acquiring Palm. Palm outlines the process to sell itself and the role of "Company C", an unnamed outfit that was in the running until the HP deal was actually announced.
Palm covers a lot of known ground such as:
- The company was in a tailspin after a Verizon Wireless partnership failed to deliver sales;
- Liquidity was about to become an issue; and
- Palm didn't have the scale of rivals to really compete.
Read more of "Palm's WebOS, intellectual property touched off bidding war" at ZDNet.com.