When Palm went up for sale one may have presumed that there were only a few companies interested in acquiring the WebOS smartphone company, but apparently there were 16 companies that showed interest in purchasing Palm reports an article over on engadget.

As we all know, HP won the battle to gain Palm but according to Palm’s statement to shareholders, 16 companies were in a month long battle for the company which involved 5 companies offering serious offers.

During the month long bidding war, Jon Rubinstein personally contacted HP saying that they needed to “significantly and immediately” up their bid to remain in with a chance of acquiring Palm.

In the end though HP did as required and upped the ante, although apparently only beating their closes rival for the acquisition by twenty cents per share and won the bidding war by placing a bid of $5.70 per share. HP was the only public bidder as all the rest were referred to as companies A, B, C, and D, for all the juicy details you can hit up here.