Palm shares jumped more than 9 percent today as private equity firm Elevation Partners agreed to pay $325 million for a 25 percent stake in the struggling Sunnyvale smart-phone maker. In addition to the cash, Palm gains the brainpower of two key alumni of Apple, which is moving onto Palm’s turf with the anxiously anticipated iPhone.
Jon Rubinstein – the former iPod chief and senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple – will join Palm’s board as executive chairman.
“Rubinstein is one of the top engineering executives in Silicon Valley, and he will lead our product-development efforts,” Palm Chief Executive Ed Colligan said in a statement.
Two of Elevation’s managing directors, Roger McNamee and Fred Anderson, Apple’s former chief financial officer, will join Palm’s board – replacing Eric Benhamou, who had been Palm’s chairman, and D. Scott Mercer.
Owners of Palm stock will receive a $9-a-share cash distribution if they and regulators approve the deal. Those shares closed today at $17.57, up $1.48, or 9.2 percent.
Palm, of course, was a pioneer in the handheld-device market. Its Treo smart-phones are popular with business people (in an if-the-company-is-paying-for-it kind of way, at least), but they’re facing growing competition from rival products such as Research In Motion’s highly addictive BlackBerry and (cue ominous music) Apple’s iPhone.
Speaking of the iPhone, it’s official: You can buy one June 29 – if you can find one, that is.
Apple confirmed the release date in ads broadcast Sunday night and posted on the Cupertino company’s Web site. (We’ll admit the ads made us want one even more, except for the fine print about committing to two years with AT&T, which has exclusive rights to provide wireless service for the iPhone.)
Two version of the iPhone will be available – one for $499 with 4 gigabytes of memory, and one for $599 with 8 gigabytes.
JPMorgan Securities analyst Bill Shope warned today, though, that iPhone availability could be limited at first. “Users may put off iPod purchases for the iPhone, but they may have to deal with a long wait,” Shope said, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Speaking of private equity deals, shares of Cadence Design Systems jumped 5.8 percent today after a New York Times report that the San Jose maker of chip-design software is in talks to be acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts or Blackstone Group.
Such an acquisition wouldn’t be inexpensive: After today’s trading, Cadence has a market value of about $6.7 billion. Its shares closed at $24.22, up $1.32.
And speaking of acquisitions, Solectron – the Milpitas maker of electronics products for other companies, including some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley – has agreed to be sold to Singapore rival Flextronics for about $3.6 billion in cash and stock.
The news sent Solectron shares up 51 cents, or 15.1 percent, to $3.88. Flextronics was down 16 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $11.54.
“Solectron is an extremely important strategic addition to Flextronics and this combination transforms the landscape of our industry,” Flextronics Chief Executive Mike McNamara said in a statement announcing the deal.
Silicon Valley tech stocks: Up: Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Oracle, eBay and Gilead Sciences. Down: Intel, Yahoo and Applied Materials.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Up 4.37, or 0.2 percent, to 2,618.29.
The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 8.21, or 0.1 percent, to 13,676.32.
And the Standard & Poor’s 500 index: Up 2.84, or 0.2 percent, to 1,539.18.
Honda is dropping its Accord Hybrid in favor of a new strategy for meeting clean-air requirements.
According to a Bloomberg News report, the Japanese automaker (which introduced the first gas-electric hybrid in the U.S. market) will not offer a hybrid version of its redesigned Accord, which will be introduced later this year.
Honda instead will focus on hybrid versions of smaller cars, such as the Civic and an even smaller subcompact hybrid expected in 2009. For larger vehicles such as the Accord and the Odyssey minivan, Honda plans to introduce clean-diesel versions in 2009.
“It makes sense for Honda,” Koji Endo, senior auto analyst at Credit Suisse Group, told Bloomberg. “It seems to be ahead of the game with diesels.”
By the way, for more auto news, check out Matt Nauman’s Every Car I Drive blog at: http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/nauman/
Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Frank Russell at frussell@mercurynews.com.