News: Palm Puts Itself Up For Sale

Although it was rather expected, Palm has put itself up for sale. The two possible buyers include Taiwan’s HTC and China’s Lenovo. Neither has made an offer yet, but both have expressed interest recently.

Although we are obviously firmly in the iPhone OS camp, it is interesting to see what happens to the competition, even if Palm has become the Pittsburgh Pirates* of the technology world. Palm has valuable patents that would be beneficial to whomever purchases the company, even if the WebOS was abandoned in favor of Android or Windows Mobile. In our opinion, the WebOS software could be greatly benefitted by more solid hardware, especially since the Pre and Pixi have had some spotty quality, yet most reviewers tend to like the software.

Apple’s purchase of Palm could make some sense, since Apple has a lot of cash lying around, Palm is an innovator, and Apple could control patents. This would obviously hurt competitors, as Apple has already sued HTC regarding a number of patents.

* We aren’t really against the Pirates, and there were a number of other teams that came to mind, but Palm has had “losing seasons” for the last few years.