A series of bids went down to the wire as Palm executives played off four companies against each other to finally gain HP's winning Palm repeatedly stalled HP's request for exclusive deal-making talks, keeping the playing field open to two other bidders and a last-minute suitor.

Palm's hunt for a rescuer began in earnest in mid-February, when it become obvious that revenues were falling far short of earlier projections, in light of continued weak user demand for Palm's new generation of , based on its webOS system software.

The from Palm's Schedule 14A proxy statement filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Meeting in February, the board of directors learned that management was projecting revenues of just under $300 million for the quarter ending Feb.26, compared to a plan of $407 million. For the next quarter, it was even worse: expected revenues were barely one-third of the planned number. The softness was now expected to continue into the next fiscal year as well, causing Palm's liquidity and financial condition to continue to wither. And that was in the face of rivals, including Apple, Research in Motion and a resurgent Microsoft with its , all of whom had greater scale and much deeper pockets.