Jean-Louis Gassée: Who will buy beleaguered Palm? No one
Monday, March 22, 2010 - 09:34 AM EDT"Who will buy Palm?" Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. "If you’re in a hurry: no one."
"In one day, this past Friday, March 19th, Palm shares collapsed, -29% in one Nasdaq session, closing at $4," Gassée writes. "The obvious question is why? But a second query immediately comes up: why $4, why not zero?"
"For months, the Wall Street 'sentiment' — I didn’t know there was such a thing there — let’s say the calculation was this: ‘Sure, Palm’s cooked but one of the Big Players will buy it,'" Gassée writes. "By 'cooked' the haruspices meant Palm had no future as an independent company."
"Much has been said of Palm’s rebirth through its new operating system, the WebOS," Gassée writes. "The problem with that line of thinking is the market has spoken, the product hasn’t done well against its competition: Android, free and rising, muscular players such as RIM (Blackberry), Nokia, Microsoft, perhaps, and Apple. Who, in their right mind, would want to buy into the smartphone OS race now?"
Gassée writes, "I’m afraid Palm will be twisting in the wind for a short while and then call it a day."
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: "Palm's Pre dog and pony show is nothing more than takeover bait. They simply do not have the resources necessary to create another mobile platform, especially one that is superfluous. If Palm's Pre is not a ruse, then those responsible are kidding themselves." - MacDailyNews Take, January 21, 2009, just after beleaguered Palm unveiled their Palm Pre and webOS.

