Sprint CEO Dan Hesse on Tuesday shared strong opinions surrounding AT&T’s recent announcement that it plans to acquire T-Mobile USA from Europe’s Deutsche Telekom. Speaking on Tuesday morning at the CTIA Wireless 2011 convention, Hesse said AT&T’s plans to acquire T-Mobile will hurt customers. He also said that if approved by regulators, the deal would leave two big players — AT&T and Verizon Wireless — in control of 79% of the U.S. wireless market. “I do have concerns that it would stifle innovation and too much power would be in the hands of two,” Hesse said during a roundtable discussion. His comments were met with applause from the audience. Hesse added that Sprint will appeal to Congress in an effort to halt the merger. AT&T Mobility boss Ralph de la Vega defended the deal on Tuesday, saying it would address the spectrum shortage the U.S. is currently facing, and would bring mobile broadband service to more people. Verizon Wireless CEO Daniel Mead, who was in attendance at the roundtable discussion, seemed less concerned with the potential merger. “We’re observing what’s going on,” Mead noted. “We’re not going to get distracted by this.”

Read

When the news officially broke that HP had put in a winning bid for Palm, it all seemed so simple. HP, a company that has long had its smartphone ambitions beset by poor hardware and execution, seemed to simply be the only company that was really intent on purchasing the troubled company based in Sunnyvale. But according to a recent SEC filing from Palm, what really took place in weeks leading up to HP’s successful bid was a five company bidding war. Click through to get all the facts straight from the horse’s mouth.

On February 17th, Palm CEO John Rubinstein put together a committee charged with investigating what options were at Palm’s disposal. The committee looked into scenarios which included the outright sale of the company, selling all of its IP, and licensing the rights to webOS. Then on the 25th of February — the very same day it slashed its guidance numbers — Palm began talking to 16 companies to gauge their interest in a potential buyout. Of those 16, only 5 entertained the possibility of a deal. HP was one of those companies. In the SEC filing, the names of the four others were withheld and were referred to as Companies A, B, C, and D. Companies A and B as well as HP were interested in the outright acquisition of Palm, while Companies C and D were merely interested in buying its patents. D shortly dropped out of contention for reasons unknown.

As early as March, and with four potential suitors, Palm’s board had concluded it would be best to sell the entire company. The reason for this was that Palm feared backlash for investors as any other deal could easily have devalued the value of its IP. Discussions with the four companies continued. On March 19th, Palm’s stock was devalued to $0 the day after it announced its Q3 2010 results. Four weeks later, April 13th, HP entered a bid of $4.75 per share. Two days later Company A entered a bid of $600 million, while Company C tested the waters with a stock offer. With three potential offers on the table, Palm instructed HP to up the ante. HP refused, but to its luck, Companies A and B withdrew their bids.

Company C entered a new bid worth $6 to $7 per share on April 18th. The next day, Palm sent it and HP draft merger agreements. The 20th and 21st of April saw Palm and HP try and hammer out a deal. On the 22nd, HP raised its offer to $5 per share. Company C, for whatever reason, dropped its offer to $5.50 per share on the same day and asked Palm to agree it would pay a $60 million penalty if they agreed upon a deal only to see it fall through. For the next three days, Palm and Company C tried to resolve their differences to no avail. While the two were in talks, HP raised its bid by 70¢ per share. Company C was warned that if it did not match the bid, all discussion would end. Company C countered with $800 million in exchange for all of Palm’s IP. Palm refused, and Company C walked. From that point on, it took HP and Palm until the 28th of April to get to the point where both companies would put ink to paper.

That, friends, is how Palm was acquired by HP. As we mentioned earlier, the identities of Companies A through D remain a secret, although we think we know how four of them are are: Dell, Huawei, HTC, and Lenovo.

[Via Engadget]

Read

According to a report from Reuters, HTC has dropped the idea of acquiring Palm after a close examining the ailing company’s books. Reuters quoted an unnamed source in Taiwan who was involved in the dead deal as saying “there just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward.” This means HTC has joined a growing list of companies that have decided against making a bid for Palm including Dell and Huawei. The CEO of Huawei-rival ZTE informed Reuters his company has not made a move. At present it seems Lenovo, which had over $2.4 billion in cash reserves at the end of 2009, is the new front-runner having said to be entertaining the idea of making an offer to the tune of $1.3 billion dollar, or 30% above Palm’s market cap. Shares in Lenovo rose in Asia on the news.

Read

Although the timing of the announcement is a bit of a surprise given that RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium kicks off in one month’s time, Mark Ruddock, CEO of popular BlackBerry development firm Viigo, announced Friday afternoon that his firm has been acquired by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Viigo, whose self-titled application is easily one of the most popular applications for BlackBerry, started out life as an RSS reader but made big waves in 2008 when it began introducing new features to the application such as the ability to track sports scores, weather, movie times, stock performance, flight information and notifications, podcasts and more. Viigo has historically developed for Windows Mobile, although it is unclear whether or not this will continue in the wake of the acquisition. But if Ruddock’s failure in his note to mention any future plans for Windows Mobile is any sign of things to come, then things aren’t looking so rosy for any platform that isn’t in the best interest of BlackBerry.

Read

It looks like Apple is getting ready to take on Google in the mobile ad space as the latter had recently purchased AdMob for $750 million. Quattro Wireless, a direct competitor of AdMob, will be picked up by Apple for a cool $275 million according to BoomTown. The company has already raised approximately $30 million in venture capital funding since starting in 2006 and has worked with big names like the NFL, CBS and Univision. Quattro Wireless has also had a presence on mobile web and in-app ads on the iPhone and Android as well. It will be very interesting to see how mobile ads change in the future and where Apple plans to go with Quattro. So far, neither Apple or Quattro Wireless have confirmed or commented on the buyout but the rumor says the announcement will come very soon even possibly this morning.

UPDATE: It’s confirmed. Check out the confirmation email after the bounce.

Happy New Year from Quattro Wireless!

We are thrilled to let you know that Apple has acquired Quattro. We want to share with you our excitement about this news and what it means for our customers.
We have built our business by enabling advertisers to reach the right consumers across the mobile web and in applications. We remain focused on delivering more engaging, relevant and useful ads to mobile devices, and improving the measurement and execution of digital campaigns. Together with Apple, we look forward to developing exciting new opportunities in the future that will benefit our customers.

For now, the offerings and services you receive from Quattro Wireless will not change. We will continue to operate the Quattro Wireless network across all devices and platforms. Your client and support teams will remain the same, and you can continue to expect the world-class service we are proud to deliver to our customers.
We look forward to working with you during this exciting time.

Andy Miller
Vice President, Mobile Advertising
Apple

Read

Is Microsoft looking to buy RIM? According to the latest buzz on Wall Street, the answer is possibly, but only if RIMs shares hit the $40 mark. With RIMs shares hovering around the $60 mark, Microsoft is rumored to be looking for RIM to tumble further before taking action. Said Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, “RIM is a massive strategic fit for Microsoft. I’m fairly certain they have a standing offer to buy them at $50 [a share].” Granted this does sound a bit far fetched, but considering that the market cap of RIM is approximately $34 billion at $60 a share and would equal $28 billion at $50 per share, the move makes sense. But how would Microsoft afford such an expensive purchase? With cash and stock options, something which Microsoft has $23.6 billion to spare. If you were Balmer & Co., would you pursue the purchase of RIM?

Read