According to an article over at Engadget Mobile via mocoNews, Palm filed its 10-K annual report with the SEC last Friday, and that Elevation Partners deal wasn't the only one Palm sealed last year.
mocoNews is reporting that Palm also bought three companies, according to details in Palm's SEC filings, though no specific names were disclosed.
From the mocoNews article:
The three companies:
-- During February 2007, Palm acquired the assets of two sole Proprietorships focused on mobile computing and media devices, one a developer of user interface environments and the other a developer of email software applications. The purchase prices of $19.2 million in the aggregate were comprised of $19.0 million in cash, of which $2.5 million was deposited with an escrow agent pursuant to the terms of escrow agreements and $0.2 million in direct transaction costs.
-- During October 2007, Palm acquired substantially all of the assets of a corporation focused on developing solutions to enhance the performance of web applications. The purchase price of approximately $0.5 million was comprised of approximately $0.5 million in cash, of which $0.1 million was deposited with an escrow agent pursuant to the terms of the escrow agreement, and less than $0.1 million in direct transaction costs.
In the 10-K filing, it says:
During October 2007, Palm acquired substantially all of the assets of a corporation focused on developing solutions to enhance the performance of web applications. Palm acquired these assets in an all-cash transaction and agreed to the purchase price based on arm’s length negotiations. Palm expects this acquisition to accelerate the development of future products.
So, looks like these acquisitions were for the development of Palm's new Nova OS most likely. Very interesting. Good to see evidence that Palm is moving along with the new OS. The acquisition regarding the corporation focused on web applications especially caught my eye since Palm talked a lot about the new OS having such great web browsing abilities.
Current speculation has the email company as Chatter and the other company as Pixio, which brought Marc Blanc (Chatter) and Paul Mercer (Pixio) on board.
Nova can't get here soon enough!
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