Palm shares plunged in late trading Thursday after the company posted yet another dismal quarter and warned that revenue for the current one will fall far short of Wall Street expectations. The company will have to take substantial charges to help its carrier partners eat through excess inventory, and whatever luster once existed for its flagship Pre is long gone. The question now is, who’s going to pick up Palm?

Palm’s last-ditch gamble on webOS has been a disaster. The operating system — which debuted last summer on the Pre — has received solid reviews, but an utter lack of effective marketing from Sprint — and more recently, Verizon Wireless — shackled handset sales. And an upcoming partnership with AT&T — which looked to be Palm’s last chance at redemption — is reportedly fizzling already after the carrier delayed the launch of webOS handsets, slashed its order and cut its marketing budget.

So what are Palm’s options? CEO Jon Rubinstein is projecting a “stay the course” attitude, saying better training of Verizon Wireless sales staffers will begin to pay off — a questionable theory given the flat-line demand for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus so far. Producing a tablet would be an interesting strategy, as James over at jkOnTheRun suggested yesterday. But the market for tablets is still very uncertain, and there’s little reason to believe Palm can move a different kind of hardware when it can’t sell phones. So a suitor will likely sweep in and pick up Palm, snatching up webOS — the company’s most valuable asset — and a sizable patent portfolio. Here’s a quick rundown of the most likely (or most highly speculated) candidates for acquiring Palm — including their odds of doing so:

• Google : The most intriguing play on the board, Google might be compelled by Palm’s patent portfolio, as Gizmodo noted yesterday. What’s more, Google and Palm both operate Linux-based mobile operating systems, which would make it easy for Google to cherry-pick the best features from webOS and add them to Android. Google could easily afford Palm, and as a bonus would keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor. Odds: 7-1
• Dell : The Texas computer vendor joined the smartphone space a few months ago, launching handsets in Brazil and China, and will soon launch an Android-based device through AT&T. But its late entry means Dell will have a hard time differentiating its hardware, and coming to market with its own mobile operating system, app store and developer community could be a great way to stand out from the crowd. Odds: 7-1
• Hewlett-Packard: HP’s tiny smartphone business is dissolving in the superphone era. Picking up what amounts to a turnkey mobile OS would be a huge — if costly — move to attract attention and breathe life into its mobile business. Odds: 11-1.
• Nokia : Nokia has long been mentioned as a potential buyer for Palm, but successfully marrying the two has become an increasingly difficult proposition. Nokia already claims the world’s most popular smartphone OS in Symbian, and its Maemo — um, sorry, I mean MeeGo – operating system appears to be its long-term strategy. What’s more, Ovi has gained impressive traction in recent months. Adding another platform to the mix would only serve to distract Nokia just as it finally appears to be regaining its focus. Odds: 25-1
• Motorola : Another hardware maker that might be compelled by the idea of owning its own OS, Motorola’s $8 billion in cash ensures plenty of capital to pocket Palm. Yet despite what Om suggested earlier this year, taking on a mobile operating system would likely be more than Motorola could handle, given its difficulty in regaining its once-dominant market share in smartphones. Marriages of two weak players from different spaces rarely end up happy. Odds: 30-1
• Microsoft : Palm and Microsoft seemed like a great fit just a few months ago. But that was before the gang from Redmond went public with its plans to scrap Windows Mobile in favor of Windows Phone, an impressive, consumer-targeted platform set to debut late this year. Windows Phone may fail gloriously, but there’s no reason to bring another OS into the fold — and webOS is largely considered to be Palm’s most valuable asset. Odds: 35-1
• Cisco : An acquisition of Palm would enable Cisco to immediately expand beyond infrastructure into the mobile consumer market. Such a move wouldn’t exactly be unprecedented for Cisco, which last year bought the maker of Flip Video camcorders for $590 million, but maintaining a mobile operating system is a far more sophisticated endeavor than simply churning out camcorders. Odds: 40-1.

This is only a partial list, of course, and new potential suitors are sure to emerge as Palm begins to circle the drain. The clock is ticking, and there’s almost no hope Palm can reverse course at this point. So someone in the mobile space might be able to do very well by picking up a dying company at a cut-rate price.

Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):

Could Games Redeem Windows Mobile and Palm’s webOS?

Image courtesy Flickr user nathangibbs.

Ankeena Networks, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of new media infrastructure solutions, has raised approximately $16 million in new VC funding, according to a regulatory filing (via peHUB).

No word about who backed the company with this third round of financing, but Ankeena Networks was listed by one of its main business partners, Juniper Networks as one of their investments when they announced their $50 million fund recently, so that’s one name at least. Ankeena had previously raised $15.2 million from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund and Trinity Ventures, so this brings its total to a healthy $31.2 million.

Ankeena Networks’ flagship product is a content delivery platform dubbed Media Flow Director, which enables mobile operators and other service providers to take advantage of rising consumer demand for mobile content and other rich media content across mobile devices, PCs and televisions.

MFD aims to ensure users receive a smooth viewing experience without buffering or stuttering despite of varying network conditions, regardless of the viewing device, over mobile as well as wire-line broadband networks. Ankeena does this by dynamically detecting the available bandwidth and varying the delivery bit-rate.

Ankeena Networks was born under another name, Nokeena, back in 2008. The company was co-founded by CEO Rajan Raghavan, chief strategy and technology officer Prabakar Sundarrajan, chief strategy and technology officer, VP of Engineering Kumar Narayanan and Jaspal Kohli, chief architect, along with Deepak Srinivasan, VP of Business Development.

Collectively, this team brings leadership expertise from companies like Akamai/Speedera, Cisco, Citrix/NetScaler, Exodus Communications, HP, IBM, InSilicon/Virtual Chips, Intel, Level 3 Communications, Mirapoint and Yahoo.

One to watch closely.

CrunchBase InformationAnkeena NetworksInformation provided by CrunchBase

In den Top 5 der IT-Konzerne mit dem höchsten Marktwert rangieren derzeit Apple, Cisco, Google, Microsoft und Oracle. Aber welches der fünf Unternehmen schätzen Börsenexperten als am wertvollsten ein?

Cisco ne fait pas qu'annoncer trois nouveaux produits Catalyst. Trop banal... Il faut une "architecture", une "vision, c'est le concept « Borderless Network » avec TrustSec, Medianet, etc.

The world's second Internet of Things Conference is scheduled to take place at the end of November in Tokyo. The deadline for papers was just extended to June 1 - which gave us an idea. Conference planners have put together a list of suggested topics for papers. We took that list and then rounded up our ongoing reporting and analysis for each of the eight topics as a way to help you understand how vast and far reaching IoT will end up being.

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'Green by Internet of Things / Green of Internet of Things Technology'

Our recent list of 6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home, looked at the IoT from a domestic standpoint. From handling toxic waste, to watershed management, to building design, to transportation, to the smart energy grid, a whole new green way of thinking is going to be made possible by IoT.

'Future sustainable technologies linking the physical and virtual world'

Different industries have have already been able to increase the efficiency of freight shipping by using sensors to tell them the location and condition of their product in real-time. This includes FedEx's SenseAware, which is designed to constantly keep track of the vital signs of all its packages. In future posts we'll be covering IoT-driven growth in the fields of virtual factories, digital cities, agriculture and forest management.

'Novel services and applications to facilitate environmental responsibility'

Did you hear about the guy who wired his house up to a Twitter account so that it alerted him whenever an appliance was used? Following that experiment, Matt Morey figured out a way to use iobridge to turn that one-way Twitter alert system into a two-way system that makes it possible to turn appliances on and off via Twitter. These ideas, which may seem novel at first, signal the direction towards the development of whole new industries.

'Emerging Internet of Things business models and process changes'

Companies as large as IBM have invested heavily in IoT. It has a website called Smarter Planet, which is dedicated to "smarter solutions," of which they say they've already developed 12,00 hundred. We've also written about ThingD, which is creating a registry of things, as well as REZZ.IT, which is building a business based on the idea that "things have a network and their own audience."

'Communication systems and network architectures for the IoT'

Pachube is the IotT business that has earned the most coverage and analysis from us. Pachube is a service that stores and shares real-time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments. MQTT, which stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, is also noteworthy. It is "a platform-agnostic system which can connect almost any networked object to the wider world." More recently, Google launched an API for PowerMeter, which allows device manufacturers to create PowerMeter-compatible devices. Also worth mention is our article on Arrayent that aims to be the "Cisco of small things" - which is basically middleware for companies wanting to connect their products to the Internet. In particular it's targeting smartphones.

'Experience reports from the introduction and operation of networked things in areas such as healthcare, logistics & transport'

IoT is still so new that we have only just begun to see the results of research. But with RFID, for example (which is one of the more mature IoT technologies), we've reported on how there have been enough challenges to limit predicted growth. There also a range of user experiences related to IofT location-based services.

'Emerging applications and interaction paradigms for everyday citizens'

From preventing lost luggage, to the latest IoT gadgets, telling the story of what a person's everyday daily life is an integral part of IoT. Most notable is the presentation by Carnegie Mellon professor and ex-imagineer Jesse Schell, who describes how sensors in everything may one day mean the sensor in your toothbrush gives you online gaming points if you brush for the full three minutes. He also envisions sensors that track if you are watching TV commercials and again rewards you with online gaming points. Core to Schell's ideas is the belief that these incentives may seem a bit creepy, but they have potential to help us create a less corrupted, more accountable and ethical world.

'Social impacts and consequences: security, privacy, opportunities and risks'

In our What The Internet of Things Means For You series we covered privacy issues related to the use of RFID and barcode readers. The latest reports show how advertisement, RFID and geolocation have combined to raise serious privacy concerns. Additionally, location-based data can be a threat to personal privacy in the context of how the U.S. congress has started to draft location-based privacy protection laws.

Are you going to the Tokyo for Internet of Things Conference? What do you hope to learn there? Let us know in the comments, or by emailing tips@readwriteweb.com, what we should be discussing in the months leading up to the event.

Discuss

Cisco's high-density blades, designed for virtualization, will enjoy a nice performance bump with the new Xeons, featuring higher clock speed and more cores than their predecessor.

Cisco dévoile la seconde phase de son programme Borderless Networks Architecture (BNA), avec la présentation de nouveaux commutateurs et services pour les entreprises.

Our Server Den columnist says that Cisco is smartly encapsulating the deep technology of next-gen networks supporting mobile workers and streaming video, but Juniper and HP ProCurve won't stand idly by.

Enterprises of all shapes and sizes are catching on to the value in moving email and other productivity apps to the cloud where they can be delivered and managed by vendors like Microsoft, Google, or Cisco.

The major appeal of cloud is that it saves money, says Ron Markezich, corporate VP of Microsoft Online Services.

C’est la question qu’on peut se poser puisque Google vient de voir sa demande de dépôt de nom “Nexus One” rejetée par l’USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) ! En effet, le nom Nexus appartient à Integra Telecom, une entreprise américaine de télécommunications qui l’utilise pour un service de partage de bande passante. Même s’il y a peu de chances pour que le Nexus One change de nom, le géant américain va devoir soit faire appel du rejet dans les six mois pour essayer d’avoir gain de cause, soit faire un gros chèque à Integra Telecom, tout comme l’avait fait Apple à l’époque auprès de Cisco pour le nom iPhone, afin de récupérer le nom. À suivre.

via nexus-one.co.uk

Votre objectif de devenir la compagnie numéro un dans l'IT entraîne une présence sur des marchés très différents. Les gens vous connaissent comme société (...)

Cisco Wednesday is unveiling new Ethernet access switches and enhanced routers designed to take on more of the jobs frequently handled by separate devices, such as those dedicated to handling video traffic or ensuring network security.

Cisco's latest offerings fit into its Borderless Networks strategy, a concept it introduced with its ISR branch routers last fall. Those routers, dubbed ISR G2, are optimized for video and virtual services, Cisco said at the time.

Votre objectif de devenir la compagnie numéro un dans l'IT entraîne une présence sur des marchés très différents. Les gens vous connaissent comme société (...)

The company is expanding Medianet to support the discovery of endpoint devices whether they are VoIP phones, cameras, or displays.