Business Insider has reported that they believe Apple was very much interested in acquiring Palm.
The company was probably interested in the patents and intellectual property owned by the company. But they were also prepared to provide fundings for them to continue operating.
The idea was to have Palm counter the challenge posed by Research in Motion in the corporate sector.
This sounds very hard to believe considering Apple would not have liked to have two mobile platforms. But the report claims exactly that.
Google was another company that was interested. But they did not pursue it for long as they could not ensure that Apple was interested in the same.
The report further said that Research in Motion had a very strong case but they just lost out because of a lower bid.
Nokia and Lenovo on the other hand did not have much interest. They tried but backed out before things became serious.
We all know that HP won in the end. They now own Palm and have the rights to their webOS mobile platform. They are likely to use it in future smartphone models and even Tablet PCs. HP has also indicated that webOS might power some of their other consumer electronics as well like printers.
