[3] Palm, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, was responsible for numerous products including the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones.

By June 2001 the company's shares were trading at US$6.50, making it the worst performing PDA manufacturer on the NASDAQ index at the time.

[12][13] In October 2003, the hardware division of the company merged with Handspring, was renamed to palmOne, Inc.[12][13] and traded under the ticker symbol PLMO.

Palm CEO Ed Colligan acknowledged that "We were approached by larger parties over the last six months," and "the reality is that we thought this was the best outcome for our business and our investors.

The Pre was often described as Palm's swan song[22][23] as it was too late to keep the company – with only $250 million in cash and short- term investments at the beginning of 2009 – independent for long.

[27][28] The Palm global business unit was to be responsible for webOS software development and webOS-based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks.

HP also cancelled the U.S. release for the Pre 3 and Veer, and infamously, held a fire sale on remaining TouchPad stock, lowering prices for the tablet to as low as US$99 (which, however, led to a major spike in demand for the device).

[32] Following the resignation of Apotheker and his replacement by Meg Whitman,[32] it was announced in December 2011 that an open source version of much of WebOS would be created.

LG planned to primarily use the WebOS platform for its smart TV products, rather than on mobile devices, but did not rule out the possibility.

[34] On 30 December 2014, it was reported that in October 2014, HP had sold the Palm trademark and related intellectual properties to Wide Progress Global Limited, a shelf company controlled by Nicolas Zibell — a regional president of TCL Corporation, which markets Android smartphones under the Alcatel brand.

[35][36] TCL publicly confirmed its acquisition of the Palm brand on 6 January 2015, stating that it planned to "re-create" the company with a new team based in Silicon Valley, and incorporate crowdsourcing into its product development.

[3] On 15 October 2018, a new Palm companion device was unveiled, which is manufactured by a new Palm-branded startup company from California that is financially backed by TCL and basketball player Stephen Curry.