Palm to acquire Handspring
Palm announced today it is acquiring Handspring, the struggling handheld company that was founded by ex-Palm executives Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins, for $169 million in Palm stock according to this News.com story. Handspring has been increasingly focused on its phone-PDA combo called Treo and has been under attack from slowing sales due to a maturing market for handhelds and a slew of entrants into the handheld and PDA-phone markets such as Sony (whose Clie line of handhelds I simply love).
The deal is expected to close this fall, after the spinoff of PalmSource. Palm Solutions Group, the company's hardware arm, will then merge operations with Handspring, creating a new hardware company with a new name.
...In the company that forms from the union of Handspring and the Palm Solutions Group, that group's CEO, Todd Bradley, will become chief executive of the new company. Hawkins will be named chief technology officer, and Dubinsky will sit on the new company's board of directors.