Ah yes, time for another pseudo/quasi non-sequitor at your favorite little enterprise mobility watering hole. This time, the quote that comes to mind comes from Mr. Samuel Clemens....a.k.a Mark Twain, when he said "The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Now without ever suggesting I could ever write the next great american "novel" (on enterprise mobility), nor ever suggesting that Palm is "dying" (we know I don't believe that), let's look at some of market dynamics around how this makes (no) sense.
So let's do a quick recap. There are rumors flying around that Palm is an acquisition target. One analyst suggests that Dell is the likely suitor (or at the very least should be thinking about it). Then there are persistent rumors that have Motorola as the one checking out Palm. Hell, this reminds me of the old rumor (c. 2007) that Motorola was thought to be looking at Nokia. But let's look also at the article that came out in Forbes today that continues the Dell / Palm hookup rumor. This whole rumor is a bit of a head scratcher, especially when jaded-Philippe often believes that financial analysts talk up "stuff" to do nothing other than manipulate stock prices for whatever ulterior motives they have. To his credit, the author of the Forbes article says (more diplomatically):
"All of this merger talk could be nothing more than the frenzied fantasies of boutique analysts with too much time on their hands during low volume markets."
So let's cut to the chase. Here's why I think Dell buying Palm would be a BAD thing and that it's just not gonna happen. There are a couple of reasons that instantly come to mind.
- First of all, I find it hard to believe that Roger McNamee over at Elevation Partners would agree to that. In case you missed it, Roger is probably THE biggest webOS cheerleader who is not an official Palm employee. I can't find the link, but I could have sworn he recently said that if he could, he would have put his entire fund into Palm. That doesn't sound to me like short term exit strategy talk.
- Second, if you believe the good people at Engadget, there's a Dell Android phone out there somewhere. I've heard this one from "my sources" for a while, so I am willing to believe it's possible that Dell is working on an Android based device. OK. So if Dell were to actually be developing a device, would it want to support THREE platforms by acquiring Palm? Don't forget, as part of its enterprise play, Palm makes Windows Mobile based devices. So let's even argue that Dell is looking at Palm....would it give up the enterprise play? Doubt it, given how it's so deeply entrenched in enterprises. Would it support TWO linux based mobile operating systems? That's another head scratcher, so I don't see how that could happen.
- This same rationale by the way holds for Motorola. It makes Windows Mobile devices, has stated it's working on some Android goodness and then has its own OS for feature phones. I don't see that being a winning strategy (managing three platforms) overall.
Now there's also someone out there who thinks MICROSOFT should buy Palm. Lord help us all. While in one context that would be plausible, given MSFT's aquisition of Danger and the fact that Microsoft created Zune after it got fed up with all the crappy MP3 players that companies were making when the iPod was eating their lunch. The Zune is very, very cool, but the MP3 player was over before the Zune even launched.
OK...so let's even think about MSFT buying Palm. To do what? To compete with Windows Mobile? To become Windows Mobile? For better or for worse, Microsoft is religious about backward compatibility. That's just NOT going to work with all the .NET apps that have already been created for Windows Mobile 5/6 - webOS I'm guessing would not work with any of those as they currently stand. Now mind you, I have heard that Windows Mobile 7 may break some old apps, but that's not ALL of them. Bottom line, I just don't see a marriage between MSFT and Palm.
So this brings me to my conclusion. Right now, I don't see ANYONE being a good play for Palm. That's not a bad thing. Let the company continue its comeback and let it live and thrive on its own. It only makes our world more interesting in terms of increased competition that only benefits us in the long run.
PS: Reading this over, should I be adding this to the "Crack" list?
