HP Buying Palm for $1.2 Billion

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.