From getting funding to being acquired, to the part where the founders left, then spun off, then broken up, and yesterday, new announcement of further break up, Palm Inc. the company has gone long way since its foundation by three budding enterpreneurs, Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan.
What began as quest for Zen design for Palm that will compete against Apple's Newton and Windows CE in 1992, it later became a target of acquisition by 3Com Corp (who just bought over US Robotics back then) due to lack of funding for the launching of Palm's first handheld. And Palm became the subsidiary of 3Com.
Sooner, Donna and Jeff left 3Com after their persistent request to chief executive, Eric Benhamou to spin it off was turned down. In 1998 they both created JD (Jeff Donna) Technology before it was later named Handspring. Cooligan later joined Handspring.
Eric Benhamou finally spun off Palm from 3Com in 2000 as a public listed company. In 2002, Palm Inc. in its strategic move to compete against Microsoft PocketPC, Symbian OS, formed PalmSource Inc. as a subsidiary to focus on the licensing and further development of the Palm OS platform.
The three founder of Palm, Jeff, Donna, and Ed, finally back to Palm when Palm bought over Handspring earlier this year after failure in the Visor line and lack of sales of the Treo.
Yesterday, Palm Inc. announced that it will broken up into three sperate entities later this year.
1. PalmSource, Inc. will be spun off into a new public listed entity (still on the same function) NASDAQ
ticker "PSRC"
2. Palm Solutions Group, will be renamed palmOne, Inc. NASDAQ "PLMO" ticker symbol from "PALM"
PalmOne will be the marketing arm for Zire, Tungsten, and Treo sub-brand. Handspring operations will
also be dissolved into PalmOne
3. A new holding entity of which 55% will be owned by PalmSource, and leaving the 45% to PalmOne
Will these seperate entities make or break for Palm in the ever competitive and consolidating organizer-palmtop-handheld-smartphone-personal entertainment market? Only time will tell. And to me, Palm has to:
[a] introduce more innovations to their machine,
[b] redefine the entire design philospophy of Palm,
[c] new aggressive strategies,
[d] manage inventories well, and
[e] avoid fiasco in product launch
in order keep up with SONY's efficiency of the Dell and design capability of the Apple (and innovations); as well as the dark force of Microsoft growing PocketPC and Windows Mobile 2003 presence into handhelds and smartphones (Read: A First Look at Smartphone 2003, Ed Hardy, Brighthand).
Reference: Palm to Become palmOne, Steven G. Bush, Brighthand, 2003
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Posted by: Michael | Tuesday, May 04, 2004 at 07:02 AM
If I were to view palm inc as a human being, it is still in adolscent stage. Now, it is suffering from growing pains;-)
It is good to do a class discussion on how a start up company got acquired/listed/merged within a few years.
Is there a clear corporate direction forward?
Posted by: Adib | Tuesday, August 19, 2003 at 09:43 AM