Palm was founded in 1992 in Sunnyvale, California, by Jeff Hawkins, joined by Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan. Its first job, software for the Zoomer handheld, flopped, so Palm survived by selling sync software for Hewlett-Packard devices and its Graffiti handwriting recognition to Apple for the Newton. After U.S. Robotics bought it in 1995 and 3Com acquired U.S. Robotics in 1997, Palm released the Palm Pilot, a companion organizer that synced with a PC. The founders left in 1998 to start Handspring, and 3Com spun Palm out in March 2000, when its stock hit $95.06 on day one before falling to $6.50 by June 2001.

Palm then split off its software as PalmSource, merged its hardware arm with Handspring as palmOne, paid $30 million to buy back its own name, and later paid $44 million to license Palm OS code from Access. In January 2009 it unveiled webOS and the Palm Pre, whose card interface brought true multitasking to smartphones, but launched it only on Sprint. HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, then CEO Léo Apotheker killed webOS hardware on August 18, 2011, and TouchPads sold out at $99.

• Palm lost 90 percent of its market value in just over a year after its IPO.
• Palm briefly sold the Treo 700w running Windows Mobile through a partnership with Microsoft and Verizon.
• Elevation Partners bought a 25 percent stake for $325 million in 2007.
• HP sold the webOS code and patents to LG in February 2013, which used them to run smart TVs.
• TCL acquired the Palm trademark and revived the name in 2018 for a tiny Android companion phone backed by Steph Curry.