Hong Kong: HTC and Lenovo Group declined to comment on a report that HTC pulled out of talks to acquire Palm, leaving Lenovo as the main bidder from Asia.
HTC declined to make a bid for Palm, the Sunnyvale, California-based maker of the Pre handset and WebOS platform, because the deal lacked synergies, Reuters reported yesterday, citing a person familiar with the matter it didn't identify.
Cheng Hui-ming, chief financial officer of Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC, and Angela Lee, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Beijing-based Lenovo, both declined to comment when contacted by phone yesterday.
HTC and Lenovo were considering acquiring Palm in a move that may give the buyer control of the WebOS system for mobile phones, three people familiar with the situation said earlier this month. HTC, which makes handsets using operating systems developed by Microsoft, Google, and Qualcomm, has assessed whether to have its own platform, Cheng told Bloomberg on April 13.
Report
Lenovo remains as the only major Asian bidder because talks with Huawei Technologies stalled, Reuters reported, citing a person at Huawei it didn't identify. ZTE, a Shenzhen, China-based maker of communications equipment, hasn't been approached for a deal, Reuters cited its chairman as saying.
Lenovo Group Limited is a Chinese-based multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures and markets desktops and notebook personal computers, workstations, servers, storage drives, IT management software, and related services. Incorporated as Legend in Hong Kong in 1988, Lenovo's principal operations are currently located in China, US and Singapore, with research centres in those locations.
In 2009, Lenovo was the fourth largest vendor of PCs in the world. It is the largest seller of PCs in China, with a 28.6 per cent share of the China market, research firm IDC said in July, 2009.
