Palm, the maker of the Treo, has long been rumored to be a takeover candidate. The latest rumblings started last Wednesday, with a story saying that Palm might be bought by Nokia, or by a private-equity shop. Weirdly, the stock went absolutely nowhere either on Wednesday or on Thursday, but gapped up on Friday morning, prompting coverage in today’s WSJ — just in time to see the shares plunging 7.5% in early trading.
Why the fall? Well, since the world revolves around me, it’s clearly because I spent far too many fruitless hours on Saturday stuck in both the Apple Store and at home, trying to get my MacBook to sync with my Treo. Even Missing Sync, a $40 piece of software designed to fix all the horribles built in to the Mac-Treo interface, couldn’t fix my problems, and I’m now more determined than ever to get an Apple iPhone the minute they’re released. And that’s not an easy decision to make, given its price ($500) and the fact that I’ll have to return to the Satanic Cingular AT&T.
The Treo was a great product when it was released, but has only seen minor improvements since then, while competitors such as Nokia and Motorola — not to mention Apple — were storming ahead. Given that the forthcoming Treo 750 won’t even have wifi, I’m not sure why anybody would want this lemon of a company. But there’s no doubt in my mind that new ownership and new management can only improve matters.