Palm Inc, creator of the Pre smartphone, is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation.
The company is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Frank Quattrone’s Qatalyst Partners to find a buyer, said the sources, who declined to be identified as a sale had not been announced.
Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電) and China’s Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) have looked at the company and may make offers, they said.
Palm, a pioneer in the personal digital assistant market, would offer buyers the WebOS software that competes against mobile operating systems from iPhone maker Apple Inc and Google Inc.
As for Elevation Partners LP, the firm that owns about 30 percent of Palm, a sale may end the volatility of an investment in a stock that has surged more than 10-fold since December 2008 before erasing most of the gain.
“Palm still has quite a good brand in the US market and some good technology, so you can do something with it,” said Frank He (何方), a technology analyst at BOC International Holdings Ltd (中銀國際) in Hong Kong. “The shares have gone down a lot and the company may become attractive to anyone looking for a turnaround play.”
The Sunnyvale, California-based device maker surged 32 percent last week on the NASDAQ on renewed speculation of a takeover bid. Before the rally, the stock had plunged more than 60 percent this year, dragged down by disappointing sales of the Pre and Pixi phones.
Chief financial officer Doug Jeffries said last month that forecast sales in the quarter ending in May would be less than US$150 million, compared with the US$300 million average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg at the time.
Palm, which has a market value of US$870.8 million, ranked sixth in the North American smartphone market during the three months ending Dec. 31, with a 4.3 percent share, Gartner Inc said.
Research in Motion Ltd, maker of the BlackBerry, led with 44 percent, followed by Apple’s 24 percent, Gartner said.
Dell Inc also looked at Palm, though it decided against an offer, two of the sources said.
Unlisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為技術) and ZTE Corp (中興通訊), China’s two biggest makers of phone equipment, may be more likely bidders for Palm than HTC or Lenovo, said Lu Chia-lin (呂家霖), a technology analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Taipei.
Chinese firms “have been quite eager to expand their international markets,” Lu said.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
FAULTs BELOW: Asia is particularly susceptible to anything unfortunate happening to the AI industry, with tech companies hugely responsible for its market strength The sudden slump in Asia’s technology shares last week has jolted investors, serving as a stark reminder that the world-beating rally in artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor stocks might be nearing a short-term crest. The region’s sharpest decline since April — triggered by a tech-led sell-off on Wall Street — has refocused attention on cracks beneath the surface: the rally’s narrow breadth, heavy reliance on retail traders, and growing uncertainty around the timing of US Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts. Last week’s “sell-off is a reminder that Asia’s market structure is just more vulnerable,” Saxo Markets chief investment strategist Charu Chanana said in
RSS