Palm to Acquire ThinAirApps
By: Carmen Nobel | December 12, 2001
In its latest attempt to make inroads with enterprise customers, Palm Inc. Wednesday announced that it will acquire ThinAirApps Inc., a New York developer of wireless enterprise software applications.
The acquisition, which is valued at $19 million and will be paid for with Palm common stock, is expected to close by the end of the calendar year, according to officials at Palm in Santa Clara, Calif. Palm has been strapped for cash this year, but last week an unnamed investor gave the company $50 million through a convertible bond.
ThinAirApps was launched in 1999 by CTNY LLC.
The ThinAir announcement follows Palms failed plans earlier this year to buy Extended Systems Inc., which also makes software that provides access to corporate applications on handheld devices.
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In June, after Palm announced that the Extended Systems deal had fallen through, ThinAirApps executives seemed concerned about Palms place in the enterprise.
"It definitely has an effect on us to a degree," ThinAirApps CEO Jonathan Oakes said. "We have to take a step back and look at how we look at the market."
ThinAirApps will be part of Palms Solutions Group, the hardware side of the company. The side of the company that sells the Palm operating system will be a separate subsidiary.
ThinAirApps is known best for its ThinAir Server product, which provides out-of-the-box wireless access to enterprise applications, but also sells products that enable developers to create their own such applications.
Its latest product, the Identicon DB module, supports both Sun Microsystems Inc.s Java 2 Micro Edition and Research In Motion Ltd.s RIM platform—the former a platform primarily for cell phones and the latter designed for e-mail pagers—both of which compete with Palm.
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