Be Shareholders Approve Sale to Palm

The shareholders of Be Inc. have approved the sale of just about all of its intellectual property and other technology assets to the OS subsidiary of Palm. The price was $11 million worth of Palm's stock.

Palm is also hiring many of Be's engineers. The company is planning to use Be's intellectual property and expertise to help add multimedia and Internet functions to future versions of the Palm OS.

Be's shareholders have also approved the dissolution of the company. There were rumors circulating before the vote that shareholders, unhappy about the shut down of the company, would vote against the sale. However, Be's management made it clear the only other option was bankruptcy.

Jean-Louis Gassee, Chairman and CEO of Be, said, "On behalf of Be and its Board of Directors, I would like to thank our stockholders for their support of the company during this difficult period.''

Thanks to Jim Barr for the tip. -Ed

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I.M. Anonymous @ 11/13/2001 11:48:20 AM #
Way to go Palm! We hope for great inovations in upcomming OS & products!!

RE: Be
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/13/2001 5:45:41 PM #
BeOS is not sufficient to save Palm.

Let's face it: OS 5.0... I mean BS 5.0 will be late. The transition to the ARM will not be smooth. And it will be wishful thinking to believe that in 2002 the next-gen PalmJobs will be out. Ain't going to happen. I've been involved with OS development and these projects take way longer than expected.

We may see an ARM-powered PalmJob with the anemic OS 4.X. That will be ridiculous but given the "talented" mangement team and the recent incremental product offerings I wouldn't be surprised.

And let's hope Sugar Water Man (SWM), Sculley, isn't the next CEO. That will be ridiculous having a failed CrApple CEO as the "savior" of PalmJob. SWM was fired for spending too much time and money on the NEWTON. It wasn't until SWM left that they "fixed" handwriting recognition. More likely, it will be the nail in the Palmjob coffin.

And... Oh yeah... All you PalmJob Drones please respond. I love all of your posts defending the management, the keebler elves, and Donna Dubinsky's waistline. Bring it on Baby !!!

RE: Be
Foo @ 11/13/2001 11:08:27 PM #
Hmm..aren't you the same person who posted on PocketPCthoughts.com as "Pooky Bear"? Your argument sounds just as stupid. If not, maybe your smoking the same crack.

Great move Palm!

Supermoo @ 11/13/2001 2:39:04 PM #
I think the acquisition of Be, and all it's intellectual property is a great move for Palm's OS division.

BeOS for years has shown a very detailed and extensive knowledge of video and sound editing on low specification computers. I still have a free version of BeOS installed on the computer I am currently using (not that I really use it that much), and it has by far the best structure for multimedia in any OS I have seen on this computer. It easily out-runs Windows and can also out-do Linux, the only thing holding the OS back was its lack of software support and developers.

If Palm do a good job of implementing their amazing video and sound support to their existing PalmOS and existing library of applications, we will soon have one breathtakingly good OS in our hands.

Cheers to Palm! :)

}:8) Supermoo

RE: Great move Palm!
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 9:40:21 AM #
>> "...the only thing holding the OS back was its lack of software support and developers."

and that is why BeOS is in the fragile state it is in. That and Be decided to *&$# itself by going the IA route, which, we all have found out is a quagmire industry. I still use the OS because it does some amazing things. But I am confident Palm will not allow others (read: beunited.org) to license the source code, so we are left with R5 which lacked a bunch of needed things. If beunited can somehow release a product worthy of the quality of AT LEAST R5, it will be a miracle (without the source code, of course) - but that is only if they wish to keep binary compatibility. I say, the hell with that - there isn't enough excellent software out there for R5 right now to warrant that much compatibility. I new netserver and complete media kit are MUCH more important. I would focus on that and cut your ties with trying to hang on to old (well, not that old) crusty (ok, not that crusty either) technology (read: BeOS R5)

Q&A with Palm's Nagel at Comdex on Palm's Future

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/13/2001 9:45:23 PM #
RE: Q&A with Palm's Nagel at Comdex on Palm's Future
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/13/2001 9:47:21 PM #
Ed - you may want to make this a feature article. Lots of good info.

RE: Q&A with Palm's Nagel at Comdex on Palm's Future
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 9:54:48 PM #
Second that. There is a lot of good sense in that piece.

Palm will prosper if they can turn those ideas into action.

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