For sale : one mobile engineering science company , slightly used — runs like newish . consort toa report in Bloomberg , floundering handset maker Palm is shopping itself to prospective buyers that may include Taiwanese rival HTC and China - free-base PC - producer Lenovo .
While the account are unconfirmed , the skid sure fit . Palm has had no end of problem in late month , with lusterless gross revenue of its Pre Plus and Pixi Plus smartphones on Verizon ’s internet , and lower than predicted financial results in the most recent quarter . Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein even issue a memorandum to the company ’s employee in an attempt to reassure them .
Just last workweek , Rubinstein shrug off rumors that Palm would be going out of business , tellingFortune ’s Adam Lashinskythat there was “ a design that take us to lucrativeness . ” Apparently that plan was to get bought , and quick . When pressed on buyout rumors in the same audience , Rubinstein sidestepped the question .
Lesser known Chinese trafficker Huawei Technologies and ZTE may also be in the run to click up Palm , though sources say that Dell has decided against a bid .
In picky , HTC would be an interesting home for Palm , which would bring along its webOS smartphone software and a decent - sized patent portfolio . HTC , for its part , has focused mainly on hardware invention , with package normally supplied by Google ’s Android mobile OS or Windows Mobile .
The former finish up as a degree of argument earlier this year when Apple accused HTC of patent of invention violation — many of the allegations seemed to be targeted at Android . Acquiring its own operating arrangement could be one way for HTC to hedge its bets in the contingency that the casing does n’t go its way .
