Enviado: 22/3/2010 22:45Este Jean-Louis Gassée sabe do que fala. Já foi CEO da Apple França, VP Marketing da Apple, CEO de BeOS, Chairman da PALM e actualmente é Venture Capitalist no Silicon Valley.
(disclaimer: conheço-o pessoalmente)
Segundo ele a PALM não tem hipótese e vai desaparecer a curto prazo.
(disclaimer: conheço-o pessoalmente)
Segundo ele a PALM não tem hipótese e vai desaparecer a curto prazo.
Who will buy Palm?
March 21, 2010 - 8:36 pm | Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée
Who will buy Palm?
If you’re in a hurry: no one.
If you have more time, here is the sad story: in one day, this past Friday March 19th, Palm shares collapsed, -29% in one Nasdaq session, closing at $4. The obvious question is why? But a second query immediately comes up: why $4, why not zero?
For months, the Wall Street “sentiment” — I didn’t know there was such a thing there — let’s say the calculation was this: ‘Sure, Palm’s cooked but one of the Big Players will buy it.’
By “cooked” the haruspices meant Palm had no future as an independent company.
...
Which gets us back to today’s question: who would buy Palm?
Or, more to the point: why, what for?
The cash versus debt situation isn’t new. Wall Street spreadsheet jockeys have known about those numbers for several quarters; their research also told them what the sell-through situation was. Still, Palm’s market cap (the total value of its shares on the Nasdaq) stayed around $1B. Today, after the 29% fall, Palm still seems “worth” about $670M.
Why?
Because someone might buy Palm for more than its “book value”, the accounting number. That’s the speculators‘ bet.
I think that theory will be disproved. (And I’ll quickly add I don’t play the stock market, I don’t own stock or options closely or even remotely related to Palm or its competitors.)
The most commonly cited asset is “the brand”. Smartphones no longer are the next big thing, they are today’s BFD. As a result, a late entrant into the market might want to dress a lesser known product with a brand consumers could relate to.
But isn’t this what the Elevation Partners team bet on? They took control of Palm, brought in new money, ditched the old management and the old product, the Treo, put in new team and new technology in play. And ended up with today’s situation: no money and a shot brand.
The other asset would be the product. Much has been said of Palm’s rebirth through its new operating system, the WebOS. The problem with that line of thinking is the market has spoken, the product hasn’t done well against its competition: Android, free and rising, muscular players such as RIM (Blackberry), Nokia, Microsoft, perhaps, and Apple. Who, in their right mind, would want to buy into the smartphone OS race now?
I’m afraid Palm will be twisting in the wind for a short while and then call it a day. A sad ending for the company that once led the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) world and then made substantial inroads into the nascent smartphone industry with its Treo.
Atênção ao MACD..... divergência