Since the beginning, Palm, Inc. has made personal digital assistants (PDAs) popular as no other company had. The company sold more than seven million of these devices in ... Keep Reading

Since the beginning, Palm, Inc. has made personal digital assistants (PDAs) popular as no other company had. The company sold more than seven million of these devices in 35 countries. The PalmPilot attracted an enthusiastic following, allowing it to protect it controlling market share from its rival PDAs powered by Microsoft Corporation's Windows CE operating system. Palm Computing, Inc. was founded in January of 1992 by Jeff Hawkins, a flormer vice-president of Grid Systems. Tandy Corporation sponsored Palm Computing Inc's first product called Zoomer. This was a handheld device that was developed in cooperation with Casio Computing, and was marketed as the Casio Z-7000 and the Tandy Z-PDA. This product was by no means a success. In 1994 Palm began marketing itself as a third party developer of other makers of handheld devices. In September of the same year Palm debuted its Graffiti handwriting recognition software. Until that time, users of PSAs usually entered information by choosing selections on a tiny screen with a small plastic stylus. adding any kind of keyboard would have defeated the purpose of a handheld device, making it too large to carry in ones pocket. In September 1995 the giant modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics, headquartered in Skokie, Illinois, acquired the Los Altos California based Palm for $44 million. In 1998 U.S. Robotics was acquired by 3Com, and Palm became a independent subsidiary which became a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the symbol PALM. In April of 2010, Hewlett-Packard announced it would purchase Palm at $5.70 a share for a all cash deal valued at $1.2 billion. The next day Palm stock rose 26%. The acquisition was completed on July 1, 2010. In February of 2011 Hewlett-Packard introduced a series of webOS devices under the HP name, indication that the Palm brand would be discontinued.