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Should Nokia buy Palm?
By siliconindia
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Bangalore: Shares of mobile manufacturer Palm rose on Friday in response to rumors that the beleaguered company would be bought by global mobile giant Nokia. But is there any sense to that business decision?
Palm is no stranger to rumors about a buyout, but this version is an interesting mix, reports ZEDnet. Nokia has spread the most by far in the global mobile space, and Palm is facing irrelevance thanks to its Pre and Pixi handsets' lack of runaway popularity that it hoped would bolster the company's future existence.
But the rumors, which would suggest, then, that Nokia would absorb Palm's handsets and its critically - acclaimed but not very popular mobile platform, webOS - don't add up very well. Nokia's latest handset, the N900, uses an in-house, Linux-based operating system called Maemo. Taking on Palm would scuttle either Maemo or webOS, and I'm not so sure Nokia's largesse would allow it to consider ceding its own creative development to tiny Palm.
According to ZDNet's Jason Perlow, Palm would be best bought by Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerrys and aging mobile platforms. But though RIM needs a buy like this, it doesn't seem as though the company is willing to swallow its pride and development to switch whole hog, either. Every mobile company wants to hang its success on its own OS to maximize control and revenue. But the development marketplace won't sustain that many platforms, and some will die. As Perlow wrote, Darwinism will take place - but that will take time and successive poor returns before a company will give up its own projects.
Not every company will bite on Android, though - differentiating in the marketplace is a good thing, to a point. Palm has offered a tempting solution, and Nokia has the breadth to help it succeed, but the business proposition isn't there - why would Nokia exchange one expensive, little-adopted smartphone platform for another?
If Nokia can't get its own platform off the ground, why should Palm's platform succeed any more with the same engine driving it?