Monday, June 04, 2007
Palm Elevated to the Next Level
Is it getting better for Palm? Apparently so, as today it was announced that the mobile device manufacturer sold a 25% stake in itself to Elevation Partners, a private equity firm who counts as one of its partners Bono, the lead singer of U2.
This announcement makes it a beautiful day for Palm, as not only are they getting some star power, but some horsepower in management. Apple’s former top hardware engineer Jon Rubenstein, who ran the iPod division for 2 years, will walk on to the Palm board as Executive Chairman. My guess is he had nothing to do with last week's announcement of the already much maligned Palm Foleo which may be destined to be a lemon.
If you look at the corporate history of Palm, it seems like it still hasn’t found what it’s looking for. Take the spinoff of its software division, the manufacturer of the Palm operating system, then to only license it back from its new owners. You have to wonder with repeated moves like this over the years where did it all go wrong?
As a loyal Palm user until the end of the world, I take pride and welcome this move like a summer rain. Hopefully today’s announcement will be like New Year’s Day for Palm, and not a day too soon with the announcement of the Apple iPhone’s release on June 29. If Palm doesn’t act soon, it may be stuck in a moment that it can’t get out of.
Ok, now tell me how many U2 songs I referenced in this post!
(The accompanying photo is a picture of Bono I snapped from Google Images with my Treo 680, then I took a picture of the Treo with my digital camera.)
Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 06/04/07 at 04:30 PM
Business • Technology • (2) Comments • (1) Trackbacks • Permalink •
