Apple Did Try To Buy Palm
Dan Frommer from Businessinsider has discovered quite an interesting little story today. Apparently, Apple tried to buy Palm not that long ago.
When Palm went up for sale, there was quite a bit of speculation on who would buy them. Apple was of course believed to be one of the interested parties, but nothing solid leaked to the press and the story died. Frommer seems pretty sure that it was indeed the case:
"Apple was mostly interested in Palm's huge library of intellectual property and patents (450+ patents on file, another 400+ applications on file). And unlike some other bidders, Apple even seemed committed to funding Palm's operations, perhaps to challenge RIM's dominance in the keyboarded segment of the smartphone industry, our source says."
The touch-sensitive bezels Palm has patents on would be very interesting on the iPhone. Also, their WebOS packs some very interesting ideas, that could have probably improved iOS in certain aspects. However, I don't believe Apple would have funded further development at Palm, but you never know.
Well, HP ended up outbidding Apple in the end so that's all there is to it. It's interesting to hear that Apple almost bought the maker of what was supposed to be, the first "iPhone killer".