BlackBerry loves U2 but U2 still loves Palm
With all of the money RIM is dumping into its U2 sponsorship, a bit of irony shined through earlier this week when Palm announced its secondary stock offering. The big news that came alongside Palm’s offering was that Elevation Partners, already Palm’s largest investor, gobbled up another 2.2 million shares of Palm for a cool $35 million. The private equity firm now owns a total of 67.8 million common shares of Palm stock in addition to its 376,000 preferred shares, totaling about 42 percent of the company. The irony in all this of course, is that Elevation Partners’ Managing Director and Co-Founder just so happens to be one Paul David Hewson… Better known as Bono. Yep, the leader of the band currently pulling down huge bucks from RIM is busy buying up Palm. One can’t help but wonder which company’s handsets the U2 front man prefers.
[Via Mobility Site]
@ BBCasper
Took the words right out of my mouth…100% correct
Bono has great taste in phones. The Pre FTW!!!
The reality is that RIM is having a hard time keeping pace. Look at the Storm. My company only supports BB’s, but everyone that has a Storm is absolutely frustrated with it. The Bold, Curve, Tour – are basically rehashes of the same form factor Palm made famous with the Treo. Apple took everything to the next level with the iPhone and now Palm is taking an evolutionary step beyond the iPhone with the Pre (and no surprise there given the talent Palm has acquired from Apple).
RIM better get some new talent to compete, otherwise their long stranglehold on enterprise friendly devices will be undone in the near future. The only think keeping companies from abandoning RIM, or at least opening up their networks to other devices, is RIM’s air tight security features. Those features will very quickly be copied by Palm and Apple (if not already) and RIM will not have a leg to stand on.
So? Good for him!! yeah!
Like phone, like owner. Cheap bit of plastic junk.
Nice rose colored glasses. Metaphorical?
Yep, they’re a has-been band, alright. They’re selling out more stadium shows than pretty much anyone this year. I guess that means they’re unpopular.
I’m not saying they’re good, but to claim that they’re washed up or unpopular is moronic. These guys have more fans than 99.9999% of all bands, ever. People are paying hundreds of $$ for standing-room spots. If that isn’t the mark of a successful, popular band, I don’t know what is.
SB
Amazing. “Greed, for the lack of a better word…is good.”
@flashgordon Apple and Palm are following Microsoft’s ActiveSync development which is getting better and better with every new MS Exchange release
Bg and friends just imagine webos on crackberry hardware with multitouch and a huge screen.
I’m not too tech savvy when it comes to Photoshop, but is this image modified? If so, it looks damned good.
How is Blackberry the fool in this scenario? Even if we accept your fabricated amount of $10 million for sponsorship of the tour and the rest of the U2 tie-ins, that still means they are paying Bono $2.5 million(before any deductions).
Elevation Partners have invested almost a half-billion dollars into Palm and Blackberry was able to get their highest profile partner to shill for them at a bargain price.
U2 fans aren’t going to the Palm Pre to get the exclusive content nor are they seeing the Palm Pre banners and displays at the U2 concerts.
So while you can giggle at the “irony” of the situation I think RIM is having the last laugh. After McNamee was removed from the public eye for making his insane predictions of people throwing away their iPhones, RIM was able to silence their next potential spokesman for a few million dollars during the launch period for the Pre.
I know you have to keep up these RIM attacks to drive in the traffic but maybe you should step back and consider what RIM is really doing.
Bono is number 2
Bono wanna biddy?
Noboby seems to be mentioning all the promotional monies U2 recieved from Apple a few yours back.
So techniclly, they’ve worked with Apple… Blackberry… Palm. So next Microsoft will get them for the next Windows Mobile 7 release in another year and thier goal of having their presence on every mobile operating system will be complete. Well, I guess there’s Nokia, too… just not here in the states.