{"id":1501,"date":"2005-09-09T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-09T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2005\/09\/09\/mergers-acquisitions-and-platitudes\/"},"modified":"2005-09-09T11:15:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-09T18:15:00","slug":"mergers-acquisitions-and-platitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2005\/09\/09\/mergers-acquisitions-and-platitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"mergers, acquisitions, and platitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today’s business news:<\/p>\n

Japanese mobile content delivery provider Access said Friday it was acquiring PalmSource, the company spun off from handheld device maker Palm to develop the Palm operating system software, for about $324.3 million, or an 83 percent premium.<\/p>\n

The $18.50 per share offer from Access represents $8.41 more than PalmSource\u2019s closing price of $10.09 Thursday.<\/p>\n

The announcement drove PalmSource shares sharply higher Friday, up $7.82, or 78 percent, to $17.91 in recent trading…<\/p>\n

— “Access Buys PalmSource”<\/a>, redherring.com<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can’t say I’m surprised. I could reminisce about my brief stint at PalmSource, reflecting on what misguidance I witnessed from the inside, but I’ve sung that song before. The bigger story here is this: Americans don’t want PDAs.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, very few people want PDAs or handheld computers; even in Asian markets where an actual majority of the population loves and buys new tech like there’s no tomorrow, the killer app is not a calendar or address book, it’s a telephone<\/span>. If your new phone happens to have a calendar, address book, digital camera, wireless net access, mp3 player, etc.<\/span> built in, so much the better. But if you can’t use it to talk to your friends– no sale.<\/p>\n

The Treo is a step in the right direction, but it’s still got it backwards– we don’t want a computer that happens to also be a phone, we want a phone that also happens to be a computer and can do lots of cool stuff. All that cool stuff is secondary to the primary purpose– communication<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Remember those cheesy long distance commercials? “Reach out and touch someone”, “I won’t drift away”, and so on. The Bell monopoly was ugly, but they knew their business.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 9\/12:<\/span> Apparently, so does eBay, who just bought Skype for $2.6 billion.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today’s business news: Japanese mobile content delivery provider Access said Friday it was acquiring PalmSource, the company spun off from handheld device maker Palm to develop the Palm operating system software, for about $324.3 million, or an 83 percent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}