Palm buys Marley documentary &quot;Africa Unite&quot;
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Palm Pictures has acquired  all North American and U.K. rights to Stephanie Black&#39;s Bob  Marley family documentary &quot;Africa Unite.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - Palm Inc.'s financial future looked a little more secure Monday as private-equity firm Elevation Partners said it will pump US$325 million into the mobile device manufacturer. In recent months, rumors have swirled that Palm would beÂ acquired by either Motorola Inc. or Nokia Corp. as theÂ company faces increasingly aggressive competitionÂ in the smartphone market. The recapitalization plan followsÂ months of rumorsÂ that Palm was seeking a buyer, or help from the banking community to fuel a turnaround. The deal has Elevation taking a 25 percent equity stake in Palm, valuing the company at $8.50 per share, a premium of around 16 percent compared with the stock's performance over the last 10 trading days. Elevation is a $1.9 billion private-equity firm and one of its five partners is Bono, the lead singer of Irish rock band U2. The investment in Palm is by far the largest the firm has ever made. The device maker has also secured $400 million and a $40 million revolving credit facility. Palm will use the proceeds from the sale of its stock and the proceeds from the new debt to fund a $9 per share cash distribution to its shareholders, excluding Elevation. The total amount of money shareholders will receive will be around $940 million. Palm expects the move will leave it with more than $300 million of cash on its balance sheet. Subject to shareholder approval and other closing conditions, Palm expects to complete the recapitalization in the third quarter of this calendar year. Once the deal closes, there will also be changes in Palm's board of directors. Jon Rubinstein, Apple Inc.'s former vice president of hardware engineering and head of its iPod division, will become executive chairman of Palm's board. He will also head up Palm's product development efforts. Besides helping create the iPod music player, Rubinstein had a hand in building the iMac computer. He's seen as instrumental in Apple's successful turnaround, responsible for revamping the company's engineering teams, product road maps and manufacturing processes. Current Chairman Eric Benhamou and board member D. Scott Mercer will resign from Palm's board and will be replaced by Rubinstein along with Fred Anderson and Roger McNamee, managing directors and co-founders of Elevation. Palm will increase the size of its board from eight to nine members. Anderson was Apple's chief financial officer from 1996 to 2004 and McNamee is a long-time venture capitalist. The transaction means that Palm will strengthen its leadership team and "create a more effective capital structure," putting it in "a great position to attract new talent, significantly strengthen our execution capabilities, and deliver long-term shareholder value," Ed Colligan, Palm president and CEO, said in a statement. Along with its handheld devices and Treo smartphones, Palm last weekÂ debuted a handheld computer called Foleo, which it calls a smartphone companion device.
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Palm OS merchant PalmSource is buying mobile phone ISV China MobileSoft (CMS) in a $22.6 million stock deal to tap into the huge Chinese market and the growing popularity of Linux.
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A consortium led by Japan&#39;s Sony Corporation has bought the Hollywood MGM Studio to mine MGM&#39;s lucrative library for the booming DVD market.
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(InfoWorld) - Access Co., the Japanese company thatÂ purchased PalmSourceÂ last year, has sold a perpetual license for the Palm OS to PDA-maker Palm Inc. for $44 million, the companies said Wednesday. The nonexclusive source code license allows Palm to modify the code base of Palm OS Garnet for use in any of its devices, including the Palm Treo family of smart phones, as well as other handhelds, Access said. The agreement also gives Palm the right to use the Palm OS Garnet in whole or in part in any Palm product, including alongside other system technologies. The agreement comes just over a year after Access bought PalmSource for about $324.3 million. PalmSource was originally the software division of Palm Inc., and wasÂ spun off in October 2003. Â
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(InfoWorld) - The official Palm blog has added an audio interview with Palm's founder in what appears to be a new attempt to justify theÂ recently announced Foleo. The Foleo, which works with a smartphone, is in a category of its own and has largely puzzled the market. It is the size of a small laptop with a full keyboard and a 10-inch display but no hard drive and will cost $499 after a $100 rebate. Palm hasn't revealed details of the processor but says it's too slow to nicely display video. The Foleo is designed to be used in conjunction with a smartphone which it connects to via Bluetooth. The Palm blog says that it is making available the audio interview with Palm founder Jeff Hawkins in an attempt to answer some of the many questions people have about the Foleo, though the blog entry admits that the interview "barely scratches the surface of everything out there." The Foleo is not a laptop and doesn't pretend to be one, Hawkins says in the segment. "It's not a product for everyone," he says. But for Treo users who travel a lot and would prefer not to lug their heavier laptops with them, the Foleo could meet their needs, he said. The Foleo would be perfect, for instance, for use on a plane, where laptops often are too big for the tray table. The Foleo is "so light and small" that users will carry it around with them the same way they carry their Treos around everywhere, he said. Smartphone users who heavily rely on the phone for e-mail and other online functions would want to use the Foleo when they occasionally need a bigger screen or need to type a lot, he said. Hawkins' renewed explanations, which sound similar to descriptions of the Foleo offered at the launch in late May, may not satisfy some early critics. "The limited functionality offered by the Foleo pales in comparison with far more capable, heavier, and not much more expensive notebooks," wrote Todd Kort, a Gartner analyst, in a report published a few days after the Foleo introduction. The Foleo would be more attractive if it had personal information management software, instant messaging, VoIP, a faster processor, and a better battery, Kort said. Kort was so unimpressed with the functionality of the Foleo that he recommends customers instead considerÂ buying an external keyboard that costs around $80, weighs just 300 grams, and "meets much of the same user needs as the Foleo." Comments on the Palm blog reveal mixed feelings from customers. Some say that they're excited to try out the Foleo, while others are clearly still confused about why it's necessary. One reader wrote: "As ever, the most critical question remains unanswered: Why?"
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SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Smartphone maker Palm Inc. will sell a 25 percent stake to private equity firm Elevation Partners for $325 million, the company said Monday, and announced that the former technical guru behind the iPod will become chairman.
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Following todayâs launch of Robbie Williams Greatest Hits album, digital music lovers or more importantly in this case mobile phone users will be able to buy the new album from Carphone Warehouse following a deal with EMI.
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Vivendi said Wednesday its Universal Music arm had agreed to buy BMG Music Publishing in a $2.1 billion USD deal. In return, BMG parent Bertelsmann AG has agreed to pay $60 million to settle litigation surrounding its support of Napster.
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âThe Price of Sugarâ is a muckraking documentary about Haitians lured into a form of indentured servitude on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic.
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When $100 buys a pocket-sized gadget that can store decades' worth of appointments -- and $200 gets you one that also serves as a digital photo album and MP3 player -- why would anybody spend up to $500 on a new Palm or Pocket PC handheld? -Rob Pegoraro
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Rare news footage and interviews with the Beatles goes on sale through download store Wippit.
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Taxing the hardware? Column Earlier this month, Universal Music Group (UMG) - the world's largest record company with acts like U2 and Jay-Z - decided not to renew its contract with Apple's iTunes music store. Universal will continue to supply iTunes its vast catalogue but may cancel that supply at any time. In the company's own words, "Universal Music Group will now market its music to iTunes in an 'at will' capacity, as it does with its other retail partners."â¦
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Palm Inc. PALM.O on Tuesday unveiled   a new smart phone under a partnership with British mobile phone   giant Vodafone Plc VOD.L, marking Palm's biggest effort to   get a foothold in the European market.
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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia  - A reggae concert in honor  of musical legend Bob Marley, which drew an audience of more  than 200,000 Ethiopians to Addis Ababa, could become an annual  fixture across Africa, its organizers said Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - Smartphone maker Palm Inc. is consulting with investment bankers on its strategic options, including the prospect of selling the company, seeking investment from venture capitalists, or making an acquisition of its own, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal. Beset with growing competition in the smartphone market, Palm is discussing a range of options with bankers at Morgan Stanley, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the discussions. WidespreadÂ speculation that Palm is likely to be acquired by another company sent the company's shares higher last week, rising nearly 13 percent during the week to close at US$18.30 last Friday. A Palm spokeswoman in Singapore could not immediately be reached for comment on the report. Palm, which sells the popular Treo smartphone, has a loyal customer base but the company faces increasingly tough competition from a range of competitors, such as BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) and Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), the world's largest maker of Windows Mobile handsets. HTC sells some of those handsets under its own brands, but most are made under contract for handset vendors and operators, which sell them under their own brands -- often competing head-to-head against the Treo. Analysts last week said a private sale could help Palm, shielding the company from quarterly scrutiny of its numbers and freeing up the company's management to make acquisitions necessary to boost the technology used in its smartphones. Â
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All Nick Freer wants is his digital music, and he&#39;s even willing to pay for it. When the Hong Kong-based client-services director bought an iPod, it came with software to link with iTunes, Apple Computer&#39;s