Palm reported to throw in the towel

Said to be selling itself

Apr 12, 2010 by

Palm iconIT LOOKS LIKE the last vestiges of Palm are going away, reports from Bloomberg say the company is shopping itself around. When things like this happen, the end is near.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Palm has hired some large financial firms to help sell itself. It comes as no surprise, mainly because sales of the Pre and related phones have been in the toilet lately. Bloomberg reports sales are about half what Wall Street was expecting.

The hardware behind the Pre is quite nice, but the software side has been bug-ridden and the missteps behind the applications support are laughable. While many of the mistakes have been fixed, the early missteps have left Palm on the verge of a proverbial death spiral for its new WebOS.

That is a real shame, the Pre had a lot of promise, avoiding the handcuffs and fascism of the iPhone and the sheer awfulness of Android. (As a phone OS, not necessarily as a programming environment). Palm could have been a real winner, the package was 95 percent of the way there, but that last 5 percent is more than enough to sink the platform among a notoriously fickle set of customers.

Lets hope the company makes it, or is bought by someone who has a similar vision. Writing about good companies with slick products imploding is getting tedious.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate