GearBits

Palm to Acquire Handspring

According to this morning's press release from Palm, Inc., it will acquire Handspring immediately after spinning off its PalmSource division sometime this Fall. The photo at the right shows (L to R) Ed Colligan (Founder, President, and COO of Handspring), Todd Bradley (President and CEO, Palm Solutions Group), and Jeff Hawkins (Chairman and Chief Product Officer of Handspring, and inventor of the first Palm Pilot).

Stock issues seem fairly straightforward: Handspring stockholders will receive 0.09 shares of Palm, and no shares of PalmSource, for each 1 share of Handspring common stock. Since PalmSource will be spun off just prior to this merger taking place, this makes sense.

This seems to put Palm squarely on the map as a well-rounded device maker. Whether it has the muscle and inertia to carry its success in the consumer and enterprise PDA markets into the mobile phone market is something that we'll all be watching closely.

Another concerns is the people at these two organizations -- there is a lot of good talent that I hope isn't displaced because of this merger (especially some of Handspring's senior management).

Now we can also all debate what the name of the new company will be (assuming there's a name change for Palm SG in the works as result of this combination spin-off/acqusition). The running favorite seems to be "PalmSprings," but I'm thinking the community in California might have issues with that choice.

Read more on this story at CNet News.com, Brighthand, InfoSyncWorld, PhoneScoop, or CNN Money, and the cynic's view is (always) available at The Register.