Palm has moved to scotch rumours the company is desperate to sell itself as it struggles to revive fortunes, although it has said it will consider letting rival vendors use its acclaimed smartphone operating system webOS. In an interview with the Financial Times, CEO Jon Rubinstein said he was “bullish” about Palm’s long-term prospects: “I believe Palm can survive as an independent company… We have a plan that gets us to profitability.” Despite a torrid set of financial results for its most recent quarter, Rubinstein stressed that Palm had a gross cash position of US$592 million at the end of its third quarter. Rubinstein’s upbeat tone comes as the company was last week reported to have hired Goldman Sachs Group and Qatalyst Partners to find a buyer. Rubinstein declined to confirm whether the banking advisers had been hired, but did admit he was keeping his options open: “If someone comes to the board with a reasonable offer of course it’s something we have to consider.” 

Last year Palm attempted to revive flagging fortunes with the launch of its webOS smartphone operating system and the high-profile Pre and Pixi devices. Despite very positive reviews of both the software and hardware, sales have been disappointing. One option Palm could use to boost revenues is the licensing of its webOS software, a move that Rubinstein has the following thoughts on: “If there’s an appropriate strategic relationship or business deal that makes sense to us then of course we would licence webOS because obviously the more scale we get the more the benefit there is to us.”