Nokia seen nosing around Palm

THE US AND A appears to be rife with rumours that Finland's Nokia might be interested in failing PDA maker, Palm. Analysts just can't get their head around why it would be interested.

They appear to be overlooking several major hints. For example, the world's Number Two handset maker, Motorola, bought a major handheld supplier, Symbol, back in September 2006.

Symbol promptly then dropped the Palm OS, so that kind of leaves the coast clear for Nokia to introduce a Palm based device.

Why should it want to do so? Well, Nokia's still leading the field in smartphones but the latest figures from Canalys showed that its lead was slipping slightly.

Nokia's weakness is in North America and guess where Palm based devices sell best? Yup, North America.

So given that its arch rival has bought a handheld device supplier and that Palm still has a big following, buying the company which owns PalmOS 5.4.x Garnet might not be such a bad idea.

After all, if Nokia inherits some Windows Mobile based devices from Palm, it can quietly drop them just like Symbol dropped Palm. µ

See Also
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