While Oracle is in a hefty battle against the likes of Google now, there was once a time when they had played with the idea of seeking to purchase RIM and even Palm to take on Google and Apple. As noted by Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison, Oracle spent quite a bit of time weighing out their options only to ultimately decide that it was a bad idea.

An interesting situation to say the least especially when you consider this all supposedly happened before HP took over Palm. We know now that RIM is open to options but it makes you wonder what would have happened if Oracle approached RIM back when Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie were still heading up the day-to-day operations. Probably for the best anyway. In this case Oracle doesn't know all and OracleBerry just doesn't have a nice ring to it.

Source: Reuters

By now most are aware of HP's decision to stop making webOS powered hardware but that doesn't mean the webOS community as a whole has given up on webOS devices. Our friends over at Pre Central have completed their review of the long awaited HP Pre 3 and although its story is a tragic one, considering the device many webOS fans have been waiting for will never really have its time to shine -- it's still a good read that tells the tale of what could have been.

In reading the review, it's easy to see that the HP Pre 3 was finally the device many were hoping to have webOS on. A 1.4GHz processor, 480x800 display, 512MB of RAM and the option of 8GB or 16GB for storage, and an auto-focus camera finally made it, at the time of its announcement, state-of-the art. Derek covers his thoughts on the device quite well, despite knowing that it'll never really be fully available to all, so make sure you check it out.

When the BlackBerry PlayBook launched, a lot of people related the look of the BlackBerry Tablet OS to that of webOS and when reading Dereks review, I couldn't help but wonder if what we're seeing in the HP Pre 3 is a small glimmer of what we'll be seeing when QNX BlackBerry devices arrive on the scene.

The "card" metaphor is there, the styling is arguably similar, and some of the specs fall in line with rumors suggested for QNX BlackBerry smartphones so it's becoming increasingly easy to imagine QNX being shrunk down to a BlackBerry. We've seen some fake images pop up, but really RIM will need to play with their UI a little bit more to make it optimized for smaller real estate. For now, I think the HP Pre 3 gives us the best insight as to what QNX may look like. What do you all think -- and more importantly, were any of you all out there waiting on the Pre 3 to give webOS a shot?

Read the full HP Pre 3 Review on Pre Central

Well this is interesting. According to a recent SEC filing and report by Business Insider, the information has come forth that it wasn't just HP who was looking at buying Palm, but also other big players including Apple, Google and Research in Motion. It's always fun to hypothesize on what big companies should do and who should buy who, and on many a CrackBerry Podcast we had the discussion as to whether or not RIM should buy Palm. Heck, back at WES 2009 I was on a panel discussion called Bloggers Predict the Future and i said then RIM would gobble them up Pac Man style (watch the video above... skip to 21 minutes for me).

Continue reading article

Between New Year's celebrations and CES 2010 in Vegas last week, my final Palm review is coming at you about 10 days later than it should. There's a side benefit though. Last week at CES 2010 Palm announced that the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus will be arriving at Verizon in the weeks ahead, so I now have much better perspective of where things are at and going for Palm than I would have had if I had this up when I should have. And with holidays and CES now behind us, the Smartphone Round Robin is back into full swing so stay tuned for lots more fun. If you've lost track of what's going on, be sure to check out the latest updates page to catch-up on who has what and so on. Read on for the review!

Continue reading article

We're half way through Week #3 of the 2009 Smartphone Round Robin. If you're a little lost as to who has what device and all that, be sure to visit the latest updates page. There are more devices and sites in this year's Round Robin over previous years, so it's a bit tougher to track but well worth your effort to do so.

While I'm checking out the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi this week, our friend Dieter Bohn of PreCentral.net is giving both the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and Storm2 a go. Be sure to watch Dieter's BlackBerry Hands-On First Impressions video and give him a hand on his CrackBerry forum thread. Posting on the forum thread each day gives you a chance to win a new BlackBerry for yourself. 

I'm really looking forward to Dieter's final BlackBerry review later this week. In previous years he tended to be pretty harsh on BlackBerry, but I think his natural and amazing Storm2 typing ability has BlackBerry in his good graces this year. We'll have to wait and see how it all unfolds. 

Either the good folks over at Palm are putting a good spin on their current situation and trying to beautify themselves for potential suitors, or they really don’t care about all the takeover talk that has been going on for months.

Today, Palm said growth in sales of their Treo devices in Europe and Asia has given the company hope it can remain viable and ride the new wave of mobile smartphone expansion it sees coming in 2009.
Palm executives cited research that suggests the annual market for smartphones will grow to $36 billion by 2009.

“We think there is a big wave coming in this whole mobile computing revolution, which is becoming a bigger part of the overall mobile phone business. We have an enormous opportunity going forward,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said at an investors meeting on Tuesday. “You can expect us to do business development around the world.”

Details on how Palm might ride this wave was not forthcoming.

He also refused to talk about takeover speculation. Motorola, Dell, HP and Nokia have all been touted as potential buyers. That speculation boosted Palm’s stocks by more than 20 percent, but since takeover talk has cooled over the last month, those stock prices have slipped back 13 points.

Palm’s Treo is in direct competition with RIM’s BlackBerry and, so far, the Berry is winning the day. Both companies are also trying to hold off Nokia and Motorola as they try and muscle into the consumer smartphone market. Apple Inc.'s iPhone is also due out in a few months.

Palm hopes that business users stay away from the entertainment oriented iPhone and that the business market for both Treo and Berry continue its vigorous growth.

Palm was a pioneer. I think most of us heard the phrase 'Palm
Pilot' long before we heard 'BlackBerry.' But the company that led the way in creating the smart phone, and the maker of the Treo, might not exist as an independent company for much longer if persistent rumors turn out to be true.

Palm, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, has been the subject of takeover rumors for more than a month. Texas Pacific, Nokia, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola are all reported to be interested suitors.

Palm isn’t doing too badly in terms of revenue. Palm reported revenue of $410 million in the reporting quarter that just ended, up from $389 million in same quarter in 2006. And this despite some delays in getting their new model out. In 2006, Palm shipped 2.4 million devices, a 20 percent increase over 2005.

But the smart phone business is a fast moving one. Where RIM and Nokia, for example, are bringing out multiple devices this year, Palm hasn’t kept up and their devices are looking distinctly clunky and thick. The Palm hasn’t altered substantially since the introduction of the Treo 600 back in 2003. And while sales are up, those 2.4 million units only represented three percent of the 74 million smart phone units sold in 2006.

But this is nothing new. People have been saying these things for a year. Why the sudden interest?

Firstly there is a belief that the costs with introducing new operating systems and introducing a radical new design will have to be addressed in the next six months. Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Palm had retained the Morgan Stanley company to shop the company
around to potential buyers.

Yesterday, Palm released their quarterly results, which showed that while revenues were up there was a drop in profits for this quarter, but all questions were about the takeover. "As you can imagine, there's a lot of rumors and speculation out there and we're not going to comment on that stuff," said Palm Chief Financial Officer Andrew Brown.

Palm’s stocks had been going up in response to all the trade rumours. But yesterday, when news began to float around that Motorola and Palm would not announce a deal, Palm’s stocks took a nose dive. It remains to be seen if a deal can be reached or if another company is going to step into the breach.

What this means for BlackBerry and RIM is unclear. One less player in the field would be viewed as a good thing, but with Palm dropping to just three percent of the market, it is increasingly seen as a minor player in the smart phone industry.