Palm, headquartered in
Sunnyvale, California, was responsible for numerous products including the
Pre and
Pixi as well as the
Treo and
Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the Pilot 1000, Palm Pilot Pro, Palm III,
Palm V,
Palm VII,
Zire and
Tungsten. While their older devices run
Palm OS Garnet, four editions of the Treo run
Windows Mobile.
Founding and acquisition Palm Computing, Inc., was founded in 1992 by
Jeff Hawkins, who later hired
Donna Dubinsky and
Ed Colligan, all of whom guided Palm to the invention of
Palm Pilot. The company was started to write software for the
Zoomer, a consumer
PDA manufactured by
Casio for
Tandy. The Zoomer devices were also distributed by Casio and
GRiD, while Palm provided the
PIM software. The
PEN/GEOS operating system was provided by
Geoworks. The Zoomer failed commercially, but Palm continued generating revenue by selling synchronization software for
HP devices, and the
Graffiti handwriting recognition software for the
Apple Newton MessagePad. The company was acquired by
U.S. Robotics Corp. in 1995. In June 1997, U.S. Robotics was acquired by
3Com and Palm became a 3Com subsidiary. In June 1998, the founders became unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking the company, and left to found
Handspring.
Stock offering and split into PalmSource and PalmOne 3Com made the Palm subsidiary an independent,
publicly traded company on 1 March 2000, and it traded on the
NASDAQ under the
ticker symbol PALM. Palm Inc had its
IPO during the
dot-com bubble and in its first day of trading the
shares of the new company hit an all-time high of
US$95.06. But competition and the end of the tech bubble caused Palm's shares to lose 90% of their value in just over a year. By June 2001 the company's shares were trading at US$6.50, making it the worst performing PDA manufacturer on the NASDAQ index at the time. which was named
PalmSource in February. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company. In October 2003, the hardware division of the company merged with Handspring, was renamed to
palmOne, Inc. In July 2005, palmOne launched its new name and brand, reverting to Palm, Inc. and trading under the ticker symbol PALM once again. In late 2005,
ACCESS, which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, acquired PalmSource for US$324 million. On 4 January 2006, Palm released the Palm
Treo 700w, the first
Windows Mobile-powered Treo, in a partnership with
Verizon Wireless and
Microsoft. In December 2006, Palm, Inc. paid US$44 million to ACCESS for an irrevocable license to use and modify the source code for Palm OS Garnet as well as ship Palm OS Garnet in any Palm product without paying royalties; with this arrangement, the Palm company could once again develop both its hardware and software. In June 2007, Palm formed a strategic relationship with the private-equity firm
Elevation Partners, who purchased a 25% equity stake of the company for US$325 million – an investment that came after months of rumours about a possible Palm sale. Palm CEO Ed Colligan acknowledged that "We were approached by larger parties over the last six months," and "the reality is that we thought this was the best outcome for our business and our investors." On 18 December 2008, Palm CEO Ed Colligan announced that the company would no longer develop any new handheld PDAs. Palm announced the
webOS operating system and
Palm Pre smartphone at the
Consumer Electronics Show on 8 January 2009, and released on 6 June 2009 with
Sprint. The design team was led by
Matias Duarte, Mike Bell, Peter Skillman and
Michael Abbott. In early 2009, the hype over WebOS sent Palm's stock from US$3 to a high of about US$18. While reviews of the Palm Pre were positive, launching with only one U.S. carrier (Sprint, which was also a distant third in the market) proved to be a crucial mistake that limited sales, even though it became Sprint's phone. The Pre was often described as Palm's
swan song as it was too late to keep the company – with only $250 million in cash and short- term investments at the beginning of 2009 – independent for long. By 2010 the share price of Palm dropped to below US$4.
Acquisition by HP and demise On 28 April 2010, Hewlett-Packard announced it would purchase Palm at $5.70 a share for $1.2 billion in an all-cash deal. The acquisition was completed on 1 July 2010. The Palm global business unit was to be responsible for webOS software development and webOS-based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks. In February 2011, HP unveiled a new line of WebOS products, including the
Pre 3,
Veer, and
TouchPad; however, these products were branded under HP's name and not with the Palm name. The launch of the TouchPad was met with extremely poor sales; on 18 August 2011, HP announced that it would immediately end the production and support of all Palm and WebOS devices, and would be "exploring options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward", including a potential sale of the division to another company. HP also cancelled the U.S. release for the Pre 3 and Veer, and infamously, held a
fire sale on remaining TouchPad stock, lowering prices for the tablet to as low as US$99 (which, however, led to a major spike in demand for the device). Following the resignation of Apotheker and his replacement by
Meg Whitman, In February 2013, HP announced that it had sold the WebOS team, along with a license to the WebOS source code, documentation, and underlying patents, to
LG Electronics. LG planned to primarily use the WebOS platform for its smart TV products, rather than on mobile devices, but did not rule out the possibility.
TCL ownership, new device On 30 December 2014, it was reported that in October 2014, HP had sold the Palm trademark and related intellectual properties to Wide Progress Global Limited, a
shelf company controlled by Nicolas Zibell — a regional president of
TCL Corporation, which markets Android smartphones under the
Alcatel brand. At the same time, it was discovered that the former Palm.com redirected to a new site; the site displayed a "coming soon" page with the previous orange Palm logo, and the slogan "Smart move", which is also the slogan used by Alcatel OneTouch. TCL publicly confirmed its acquisition of the Palm brand on 6 January 2015, stating that it planned to "re-create" the company with a new team based in
Silicon Valley, and incorporate
crowdsourcing into its product development. On 15 October 2018, a new
Palm companion device was unveiled, which is manufactured by a new Palm-branded startup company from California that is financially backed by TCL and basketball player
Stephen Curry. It is an "ultra-mobile", Android-based device designed to serve as a smaller, simplified companion to a larger smartphone. The new device was announced as being exclusive to
Verizon Wireless, only available as an add-on to an existing or new device plan. == See also ==