HP Buying Palm for $1.2 Billion

News

Jeff Gamet

5:36 PM, Apr. 28th ET, 2010

Articles by Author Jeff Gamet on Twitter Contact Author Bio

Comments (8)

HP announced late on Wednesday that it is purchasing ailing smartphone maker Palm for US$1.2 billion. The deal will bring all of Palm’s technologies under the HP umbrella, and may even let Apple alum and current Palm CEO Jonathan Rubenstein keep a job, according to Forbes.

Palm is known for helping kick start the PDA industry with its Palm Pilot electronic organizer, its Treo smartphones, and most recently for its webOS and Pre smartphone. The Pre and the followup phone, the Pixi, however, haven’t been selling as well as the company had hoped.

Palm has been suffering from poor sales of its webOS-based smartphones and has been shopping around for a buyer since at least early April. Other companies rumored to be considering snatching up Palm included HTC, Lenovo and Dell.

There’s no word yet on exactly what HP plans to do with Palm after the acquisition, but it does seem likely that the company will use Palm’s technology to attempt to gain a foothold in the smartphone market.

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8 Observer Comments

geoduck

said on April 28th, 2010 at 5:03 PM (Edited: 01/26/2012 2:46 PM):

it does seem likely that the company will use Palm’s technology to attempt to gain a foothold in the smartphone market.

Good luck with that.

craigf said on April 28th, 2010 at 5:06 PM:

It’s hard to whip up any enthusiasm for HP as a nimble competitor who will compete and improve the breed. HP is your dad’s company.

geoduck

said on April 28th, 2010 at 5:20 PM (Edited: 01/26/2012 2:46 PM):

yes, HP does have the “Your Father’s Oldsmobile” problem doesn’t it.

Tiger

said on April 28th, 2010 at 5:42 PM:

more like my father’s Edsel.

Which we had!

geoduck

said on April 28th, 2010 at 5:43 PM (Edited: 01/26/2012 2:46 PM):

Just a thought
Is it possible that they are not looking at the phone market. Rather, could they be planning on using WebOS for tablet devices, possibly even discontinuing all of Palm’s current products which frankly aren’t setting the industry alight.

Jeff Gamet said on April 28th, 2010 at 5:45 PM:

could they be planning on using WebOS for tablet devices,

I think that’s very possible. Windows isn’t well suited for tablet devices, but webOS is nimble enough to do just that. Depending on how HP positions these hypothetical tablets, that could make for some interesting competition for Apple and the iPad.

Tiger

said on April 28th, 2010 at 8:12 PM:

Refresh my memory, did this work out well for Compaq?

brett_x

said on April 29th, 2010 at 7:53 AM:

Doesn’t Palm have a whole lot of patents? It’s been discussed that it would be valuable for Apple to buy Palm just for it’s IP.

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