Battered by competition from the iPhone, Blackberry and Google's Android operating system, smartphone pioneer Palm is looking for a buyer to help keep the company's technology afloat, the Bloomberg financial news agency reported Monday, according to dpa. The company is working with investment bankers to arrange a sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, the report said. Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, as well as China's Lenovo, have both looked at the company and may make offers, while Nokia, Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp, China's two biggest makers of phone equipment, were also reported to be interested. Palm's main asset is the WebOS smartphone operating system, which has been widely praised as a worthy rival to Apple's iPhone operating system and Google's Android, but which has failed to capture sufficient market share to sustain itself. Founded in 1992, Palm was a pioneer of mobile personal computing devices and introduced the Palm Pre, its first phone to run on WebOS, in June 2009, sending the company's stock up tenfold within several months. But the shares gave up most of their gains as the company failed to translate positive reviews into market share. Palm is currently ranked sixth in the North American smartphone market with a 4.3 per cent share.
