Palm

Oracle considered buying Palm and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion as part of an aborted effort to build its own smartphone, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in court Tuesday. 

Oracle decided that RIM was too expensive and Palm wasn't competitive enough, and Oracle didn't have enough expertise in-house to develop a smartphone by itself, Ellison said. "We explored the idea (of building a phone) and decided it would be a bad idea," he told the court.