12/10/01 Is Apple the mysterious investor who gave Palm 50 million dollars?
At the end of last week, Palm announced it has issued a $50 million convertible note to an unidentified investor. This note is good for 5 years at a 5.0% coupon rate and can be converted into Palm common stock at $4.63 per share. According to Eric Benhamou, Palm chairman of the board and CEO, "this capital commitment demonstrates a high level of external confidence in Palm.". Benhamou also said : "we´re moving ahead on our strategic objectives -- returning to profitability, executing on our enterprise strategy and delivering an ARM- based set of solutions to the marketplace".
Could Apple be the mysterious investor? What if Apple was making an investment, to finally have a PDA to sell? Since Palm is going to use ARM processors and since Apple knows a lot about that processor ( the Newton and the iPod have one), it may be the case, even if Steve Jobs says he does not believe the PDA market is mature enough.
Why does that investor want to remain anonymous? Probably because he has some kind of project/product that has to remain secret before Palm can sell it. You can give us your opinion about that story on our forums.
