Another day, another rubbish takeover…
What on earth is wrong with the corporate world? People are buying other companies they should stay away from, believe me. Take Oracle and Sun. Oracle bought Sun to get their hands on Java, and to turn themselves into an IBM-style one stop shop. Fail. James Gosling has left, many of the key Sun Players have left, and all they’ve got left is some blue colours and some open source software. And Oracle really don’t understand open source. If they did, they wouldn’t be charging for the OpenOffice plugin…
And there’s more. Hp wants to buy Palm. I never thought HP buying Compaq (or Compaq buying DEC) made much sense, to be honest, and I think HP’s attempt to buy Palm is misguided (to put it politely). HP will take a former market leader that it doesn’t really know what to do with (let’s face it, if it had a clue what to do with smartphones or PDAs, its previous attempts would have been an order of magnitude better than they were) and ruin it. $1.2 billion wasted, not to mention the on costs. What are they thinking?
Now, Apple buying Sun I at least could have understood. It would have given them access to Sparc, got them control of Java (VERY useful for the Iphone, I’m sure) and got them a better foothold in the lucrative server marketplace – not to mention their own set of Unix and hardware gurus whose experience could have catapulted OS X into the major big time. But alas, it might have lost them some control and some chance of revenue, so even though they now have a bigger market capitalisation than Microsoft (and Oracle), it was not to be. Late in the day, they’ve started to think about buying ARM – perhaps kicking themselves for missing the golden opportunity when they had the chance? (Or just because all the key PA semi engineers up and left?)
If anyone needs to buy Palm, it’s Microsoft. Their Windows mobile platform, while gaining technical plaudits from the capitalist .Net running dogs, is about as clear as an old DEC licensing strategy, and only half as commercially interesting. Of course, it’ll ruin Palm completely and fail just as hard as Windows mobile because Microsoft aren’t good at absorbing big companies (neither are Oracle, of course).
Ironically, Oracle buying Palm could have been a great move. It would start Oracle’s move into the client sphere, get the name out there – really start to move them as a brand. If only they hadn’t made such a bungle of buying Sun, buying Palm would be a great move. Now it would just look like someone trying to get out of a hole by buying a bigger spade.
So what acquisition would make sense?
Microsoft should consider buying a phone manufacturer. It’s not good at hardware, at least not with the tie ups so far (mice and keyboards notwithstanding). Perhaps Siemens might be willing to offload its stake in the BenQ debacle? After all, BenQ make technically robust phones. It could be a goer.
Oracle doesn’t need more acquisitions right now. It can’t handle the debacle that is Sun. But Palm remains a potential winner – if it’s handled right.
Apple needs a chip manufacturer. ARM looks good, but could cause regulatory headaches in the cellphone market and Motorola would cause worse ones. SGS Thomson, or VIA, might be a sensible option – x86 licence, fairly mature chipset options. Worth a quick bet, if you’re near a Ladbrokes tomorrow…
And what about poor old HP? Ah, so many missed opportunities. Alpha? Whatever happened to that? And it was a chip with so much promise. No, what HP needs is to slim down. Get rid of some of the software bloat (surely spinning out OpenView as a separate company would focus the team’s minds – OV is dying the death of a thousand project management meetings at present…) and maybe refocus around consumer/enterprise hardware, maybe even bringing back the much-loved DEC/Digital brand?
Well, that’s my ideas. Thanks for reading. If you disagree with me (as ever) leave a comment – all contributions gratefully excoriated!
Tags: acquisition, Apple, BenQ, business, DEC, Digital, HP, IBM, Java, merger, Microsoft, Motorola, OpenOffice, OpenView, ORACLE, Palm, SGS Thomson, Siemens, Sun, VIA