After years of wandering in the wilderness, Palm finally did the right thing. It completely restructured the company for innovation, changing executives, engineers, operating systems and even core assumptions about how a cell phone handset should operate. And finally, it , who headed the development of the iPod.

Unfortunately, all this came two years too late. As a result, the company is not likely to survive as an independent company.

I predicted this fate way back in early 2007 (" ") when the company was still profitable and the economy wasn't in recession.

In that column, I wrote:

"The tragic story of Palm's fall from greatness is a history of squandered resources and misplaced effort... Palm merges with another company only later to be spun off. The company ignores the founders' direction, only to later acquire their start-up and take up its direction. Palm spins out the software division only later to buy back the rights to it. Palm gives up the Palm trademark only to later buy it back. How many times has Palm distracted, divided and plundered the company with spin-offs, acquisitions and mismanagement?"