Palm Had Bids From Google, Apple And RIM Before HP Won Out

The HP-Palm deal, which found HP acquiring Palm earlier this year, will likely go down as one of the most monumental in tech history. Palm used to be a giant, and HP has never been a serious mobile player. Many say the two have little in common, and many wondered why some other company didn't shell out the needed funds to pick up such a intelligence-rich company. The early favorite from a consumer perspective was HTC, but that was simply selfish dreams of having an HTC Hero with WebOS installed. On the business side, HTC was never really interested in spending the kind of money that Hewlett-Packard was ready to spend, but according to a new report at Business Insider, a few other companies were.

The real story behind the whole HP-Palm acquisition was never really told. A few rumors were thrown around early on, but it has mostly been forgotten since. Now, a new report from sources close to the deal have made clear that Palm was a lot more demanded than most people think. It's easy to see HP pick up Palm and assume that none of the major mobile guys were interested. Reportedly, that's far from true. Apple was one of the most determined to buy Palm, mostly due to Palm's massive library of intellectual property and patents. And even Steve Jobs himself recently admitted that Palm was good at making software, with WebOS lauded in particular. In the end, Apple simply didn't want to shell out enough money, and with iPhone sales as high as they are, it's not like they really needed WebOS to thrive. It's a real shame, though. We would've loved to see WebOS taken into the caring hands of Apple; as it stands, there's a good chance that the Palm we all knew and loved has died with the HP acquisition.

And then there was RIM. The company that makes BlackBerry handsets was at first really high on the list, with a huge bid that nearly won out. But at the last minute, HP threw in one final higher bid that RIM didn't counter, and according to the source, they had to work "incredible hard to blow it."The final major player was Google. Even with Android, Google was bidding to pick up the pieces of Palm, though it's said that their bids were never nearly large enough to be considered alongside HP and RIM.

The piece is pretty interesting if you're really keen on finding out the dark backstory of the bid process, particularly if you'd like to imagine the "What Ifs!" that obviously come with such rumors. Can you envision how wild this story would be if Apple or RIM had won out? Wow...