Iria

Palm CEO Ed Colligan spent several days in Cannes in February 2004 talking up the Treo handheld computing device over its Windows-based competitors. But that same week, away from the massive 3GSM trade show, he was secretly meeting with the enemy.

At a nondescript Comfort Inn a short distance from the main conference center, Colligan and several Palm colleagues held a clandestine gathering with a team from Microsoft that was led by mobile unit head Pieter Knook. The groups took separate cabs to the hotel, met for several hours in a conference room, and then returned to the tech confab as though their rendezvous had never happened.

The secret meeting, to discuss business terms of a possible partnership, paved the way for the developers of the Palm operating system to join up with a company that had once been their fiercest rival.

Now Colligan and his Microsoft counterparts have gone public. On Monday, Colligan and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates were on a ballroom stage at the far-tonier Palace Hotel in San Francisco to announce plans for a Windows-based Treo.
__________
Read More / Source: News.com