Does RIM Want Palm?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/markets/streetwise/does-rim-want-palm/article1547913/

by raganwald • 16 years ago

14 21 16 years ago

raganwald4• 16 years ago

As Fake Steve Jobs quipped, this would be like the the number two and number three sprinters trying to beat number one by strapping their legs together and running three-legged.

ableal2• 16 years ago

Analogies are a dime a dozen. If the #3 sprinter has the running shoes and water bottle that #2 is lacking ...

Interesting bit (news to me) in the original piece:

the Canadian purchased a perfectly decent operating system for future devices in early April for an estimated $200-million, when it bought a small player named QNX Software.

raganwald4• 16 years ago

> Analogies are a dime a dozen

Oh yes, absolutely. A witty analogy is often just that, a quip. I do think that many mergers motivated by the desire to dethrone the leader do wind up with an entity that is weaker than its constituent parts. IIRC, FSJ was talking about MSFT and YHOO merging to take on GOOG.

In this case I think the analogy supports the article's conclusion, which is that RIM is in no hurry to buy Palm. If I can strain the metaphor, buying Palm would be like teaming up to run a race three-legged because you're thirsty and the other runner has a water bottle. Buying QNX was like buying a water bottle.

dagw• 16 years ago

I wonder how hard it would be to port the WebOS userland to run on QNX. That could turn out to be a pretty awesome platform for RIM to build on.

halo• 16 years ago

You could have said the exact same thing about Apple buying NeXT in 1996.

raganwald4• 16 years ago

Actually, I freely admit I did say that. And I don't think that if the same thing happened again I'd be wrong. Steve Jobs has beaten very long odds with Apple to date. I don't think it's a good idea to look at a merger like this and think "Apple pulled it off, so the stock must be a bargain."

At that time the iMac lay in the future, the iPod lay in the future, and obviously the iPhone lay in the future. Betting that the merger with NeXT would led to success with products that didn't even exist yet is no better than giving Steve Jobs a couple of hundred million to launch NeXT in the first place. And that wasn't a good bet.

mdasen• 16 years ago

This seems to be the best buyer for Palm from my perspective. HTC and others are currently selling popular Android devices and there's little sense for HTC to sell Android, Windows Mobile, and an HTC owned webOS to consumers. RIM, on the other hand, could use Palm much like Apple used NeXT. webOS could become the foundation of the next generation of BlackBerry devices. It provides the same all-in-one experience that RIM does on a more modern platform. They would just need to integrate it with the tools that business people buy BlackBerries for. Combined with the BlackBerry name, it could go far.

Other manufacturers have already cast their lot with Android and it wouldn't make sense for them to offer both Android and webOS since they would have to keep pouring money into webOS development rather than getting mostly free Android development. And, to be frank, consumers have shown that they prefer Android. RIM is really the company whose weight could change that. A "BlackBerry" webOS running with one of RIM's keyboards and integrating with their Enterprise Server could do well in terms of market-share.

mrtron5• 16 years ago

Sure the best bet for palm, but not for RIM.

I think people are missing the point with RIM. Their existing operating system has a very solid foundation. Everything low level is very optimized for two things important on mobile: battery life and efficient use of networks. The devices work very well. Most importantly: they work very well in big business.

Their GUI isn't flashy. Their venture into touchscreen went poorly. But neither of those seem like a reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

elblanco3• 16 years ago

Please, RIM is in severe need of a major OS update. Blackberry OS was kinda okay 7 years ago, but the devices I see now are more or less the same ones I was using in 2003.

mrtron5• 16 years ago

The new OS version is coming out shortly I believe.

But what exactly is it in need of? My only complaint is their menuing system is not very pretty.

elblanco3• 16 years ago

It reeks of "don't care". It's clunky in places, everybody has to roll their own gui toolkit to make anything that looks halfway decent, performance isn't that great (maybe the devices are slow), crap is buried in long lists of settings, I can use a microSD card with it but it's pointless because I can't install anything to that card, restarting the device is a pain since I have to approve a dozen security policy dialogs that don't fit on the screen, typography is a disaster. I once accidentally his the wrong security setting when installing Opera on mine and I have no idea how to change it, after a year of poking around and a full system wipe. So now, every time I go to surf the web, I have to spend 5 minutes fighting past security authorizations.

All this was okay in 2000, but the devices haven't evolved one bit since then. I got mine new, just on the market, in '08 from my company. Really, even with a new OS, the devices need to get with the times. Buying WebOS would give them a halfway decent, well thought out OS, and force their hand with the crappy hardware.

Does RIM Want Palm?

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