Smart-phone maker Palm is consulting with investment bankers on its strategic options, including the prospect of selling the company, seeking investment from venture capitalists or making an acquisition of its own, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal.Beset with growing competition in the smart-phone market, Palm is discussing a range of options with bankers at Morgan Stanley, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the discussions. Widespread speculation that Palm is likely to be acquired by another company sent the company’s shares higher last week, rising nearly 13 percent during the week to close at US$18.30 last Friday.A Palm spokeswoman in Singapore could not immediately be reached for comment on the report.Palm, which sells the popular Treo smart phone, has a loyal customer base, but the company faces increasingly tough competition from a range of competitors, such as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and Taiwan’s High Tech Computer (HTC), the world’s largest maker of Windows Mobile handsets. HTC sells some of those handsets under its own brands, but most are made under contract for handset vendors and operators, which sell them under their own brands—often competing head-to-head against the Treo. Analysts last week said a private sale could help Palm, shielding the company from quarterly scrutiny of its numbers and freeing up the company’s management to make acquisitions necessary to boost the technology used in its smart phones.-Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service (Singapore Bureau) Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe