Well, if we had one of those obnoxious “BREAKING!”-tags on OSAlert, this would definitely fit the bill. While we were busy discussing whether HTC or Lenovo would snap up Palm, another major worldwide computer company picked up the Sunnyvale-based mobile outfit: Hewlett-Packard has bought Palm. Updates from the conference call inside.
Conference call
During the conference call, two things became very, very clear. First, The central reason HP bought Palm is the webOS – not just the operating system, but the platform around it. Palm is going to “double down” on the webOS. The second thing that became very clear is that HP plans to move the webOS beyond consumer smartphones – especially tablets seem to be the hot thing here. “Between smartphones, slates, and potentially netbooks, there are a lot of opportunities here,” HP said.
There’s also very good news for Palm and its employees: HP plans to keep most of the existing infrastructure within Palm intact, including the management team. This hopefully means we won’t see too many people get fired, while also ensuring that the bright people who developed the webOS and its platform will be the ones to continue its development.
Overall, it seems like this is very, very good news for Palm, its employees, and its customers. As a Palm fan, I’m very excited about this deal.
Original story
The press release states the the boards of directors of both companies have approved the transaction. HP will buy Palm for 5.70 USD per common stock, which amounts to an enterprise value of approximately USD 1.2 billion. The deal is expected to finalise July 31, 2010.
“Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s Personal Systems Group, “And, Palm possesses significant IP assets and has a highly skilled team. The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share. Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market.”
Of course, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein had his say as well. He is expected to remain with the company after the acquisition, although it is unknown in what capacity.
“We’re thrilled by HP’s vote of confidence in Palm’s technological leadership, which delivered Palm webOS and iconic products such as the Palm Pre. HP’s longstanding culture of innovation, scale and global operating resources make it the perfect partner to rapidly accelerate the growth of webOS,” Rubinstein said, “We look forward to working with HP to continue to deliver industry-leading mobile experiences to our customers and business partners.”
This is pretty good news, actually. Both Apple and Dell, two major HP competitors, have invested, or are investing heavily in the mobile space; Apple with the iPhone OS, and Dell with Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. The PC market isn’t a particularly profitable one (margins are going down), so if HP wants to compete with the rest, it has to have a viable mobile platform as well. The webOS, and hopefully the Palm brand, will allow them to differentiate themselves from other PC companies which will ‘just’ offer Android phones.
A conference call is planned for 5 PM ET, which is about 25 minutes from now. We’ll update this story as soon as more details emerge.
Looks like all company wants a share on Mobile, Dell started its own Phone, Asus has Phone,..etc, HP had iPaq, now when the Palm I think they will come up with better iPaq.
Credit where credit is due, if Apple comes up with something, others tend to follow suit. PC, laptops, now phones and in the not too distant future, tablet computers. The only consumer electronic hardwares that wasn’t an Apple creation that comes to my mind is the netbook and the regular cell phone.
Are you serious, or just being sarcastic???
I really really hope sarcastic or else I’m going to have to reach for my puke bucket
I’ve always kind of suspected that, in a few more years, most people will believe that Apple wrote the POSIX standard and created FreeBSD.
Edited 2010-04-29 16:54 UTC
Okay:
PC: Apple was a good innovator for a while
( read: up until about 1985, then again, artistically, with OS X ). The best thing that came out of Apple was BeOS, and that was made by ex-Apple employees.
Laptops: Apple was pretty late to the scene, here and haven’t done much enviable innovation.
Phones: The ONLY thing the iPhone brings to the market is a cute little package. The iPhone has no significant innovations over my Palm Treo 650. Apple did do one thing very well, however: trick people into paying MUCH higher rates to AT&T for the SAME service ( do some pricing! ).
Tablets: Here, the biggest innovator, IMHO, was Be, INC. I actually owned one of the BeIA Tablet prototypes, it was a very nice device and MUCH more capable than the iPad ( adjusting for the era, mind you ). Seriously, there isn’t anything innovative about the iPad, it is just another gimmick. And Apple is not an innovator here, either.
Seriously, though, Apple doesn’t need to innovate. They figured this out: If you make it pretty, those without knowledge will buy it in droves. If all those people buy it in droves, more developers will come which will make things better for everyone.
Problem, now, is that Apple doesn’t know how to support an open development environment, the company is run by lawyers, it seems.
The company is a real A** HOLE in the market place.
–The loon
perhaps webOS will live on, now. only wish it was open source
And like that, HP is a major player in the smartphone market. Now they can make the hardware and the software and deliver a seamless experience.
If they’re smart, they’ll hire someone to come up with some sexy designs and make certain they get something great to market within a year.
I’m sure Palm already has a number of very sexy designs and prototypes ready to be turned into products – they just couldn’t before due to the lack of money.
Now they have Slate + WebOS device too.
Heck, didn’t even think of that. Although, isn’t the Slate Intel Atom?
Again – I’m sure Palm has internal designs for a webOS tablet, since the OS is a natural fit for it.
Who cares? It’s just a CPU, it only makes difference for the kernel & drivers. The interesting parts of PalmOS are on top of those.
it also makes a difference for the battery
So? webOS is just a specialized Linux distribution that uses many common components: WebKit, SDL, … .
Worst-case scenario are PDK apps. Those need to be recompiled. Oooh, big deal…
The rest is JavaScript.
HP likely bought Palm for their patent portfolio. While Palm’s existing presence in the market does help HP get a product out the door faster, i am thinking its more for Palm’s IP. Then again, this makes sure right off the bat that HP beats Dell in the mobile phone arena, if based on nothing than existing user base.
if they are really really smart. they already have a design ready to go and they are just waiting to slap webos on it.
AFAIK the first attempt of HP at a smartphone was when it parterned with Nokia to modify the 200LX into the bulky OmniGo 700LX as a partner device and dock for the Nokia 2110, which I speculated Nokia then perfected into the very first 9000 Communicator.
don’t do to PALM what you did to Compaq! now that you have PALM it’s your responsibility to keep it as good as it is or make it better. do not cannibalize is like you did to compaq… that is all.
Cannibalize? You make it sound like Compaq actually had products worth cannibalizing…
Proliant server line.
HP servers was always better than compaq’s though.
Back in an earlier company I worked for, we were quite impressed with proliant servers compared to HP’s earlier “netserver” line. Same price point, but with proliant you got a much more solid and well thought out hardware story.
exactly
Well, Compaq and HP where in the same market already, whereas HP and Palm aren’t. It would make a lot more sense to “cannibalize” a competitor who you acquire if they’re already making the same (type of) product you are, with the same technology at a similar price-point, targeting the same market, etc.
it still happens. they could pull a Dell, and make their own phones (or sell their own phones) and only have bought palm so that they wouldn’t run into patent issues (or as many) and release their own stuff. Palm has a ton of intellectual property that is worth a lot…
buti don’t see that happeneing, and since i love WebOS I can’t wait to see how it turns out with a fresh injection of HP’s money
Aplha servers and Tru64 Unix. Sure Compaq didn’t create them but rather acquired them from DEC, but Compaq didn’t seem to want to kill the line of RISC processor and corresponding OS. As soon as HP came into the picture, plans were thrown out of the window. I recall back in 2000, that we were promised a roadmap that extended through 2007. We were promised the EV7 and likely EV78. These promises offered by HP, were killed.
Carly is not in charge so Palm should be fine.
Does HP have any mobile hardware that could make use of Palm’s WebOS or will they let Palm continue to manufacture the hardware and just put the HP logo on it?
Slightly off topic question. Does Palm still own BeOS? I’ve been pondering this one since Palm was up for sale.
Access owns BeOS, not Palm.
It sure would be nice if Access would open up BeOS sure the code is old and haiku has already surpassed it but that is the point unless it has been maintained its pretty useless at this point except for improving Haiku by actually having the original implementations instead of just header files to go by…
Some of the kernel stuff such as ISA detection and drivers as well as optimized codecs would still be of some use
The problem is, BeOS had quite a few pieces of code licensed from third parties in it. If Access had any desire to open the code, they’d first have to do a detailed audit to find and rip out any such pieces. Since that also covers things like the codecs that came with BeOS (the only one of which was actually any good being Indeo, which is for all practical intents and purposes dead), it’s by and large not useful and not worth the effort. Haiku in particular would see pretty much no real benefit from it at this point in the game, half a decade ago might have been another story.
HP logo is going to be essential. All the trendy kids in coffee shops are drooling over the opportunity to show off their Hewlett-Packard mobile terminals. In beige.
Palm does not manufacture anything. They hire FoxConn, Quanta, or another manufacturing contractor. So does HP.
Likely the Palm brand will be used in a similar fashion to Compaq: HP Palm will the mobile brand (“Compaq” is now used for compact desktop PCs).
Compaq’s name is typically used now for low end machines not just desktops. They have a few laptop models (typically $500 and less) as well as the entry level desktops
They use HP Compaq on their business line machines, which are high quality.
Edited 2010-04-30 20:30 UTC
This is a very nice turn of events for Palm; the problem Palm had was that they absolutely had to make money with everything they do, with no tolerance for market failures (funded by stable income from other products). HP shouldn’t have that problem; they can focus on monetizing on their devices over a longer period of time.
As a webOS user this is such a better outcome than I would have envisioned these last couple of months. No matter what happens to Palm now, it almost certainly means life for webOS. Great news!
I can see hp releasing a HP Slate device in
8 months or a year with WebOS as the operating system.
If HP does it right .. they could have a very
good tablet device.
Wishful thinking. It looks more likely that Palm will work largely independent instead of tight integration to HP. Most likely Palm will offer more Blackberry style phones with own brand while HP brings high-end phones with Windows Phone 7 OS. This will likely mean HP won’t offer WinMo6.5 or Android phones on new markets, instead they push cheap Palm phones. Even if they would integrate Palm it would take years for device that you fantasy come to market. HP has shown very little intrest on ARM style netbooks or slates. More likely they keep pushing high-end slates(over 500 euros) and Windows netbooks using Intel processors.
I don’t know why a big company like HP is doing here, putting its nose on mobile world.
Maybe they dream about the huge amount of money Apple has made in this area.
And speaking about webOS, remembering HP Servers, I think about Cloud Computing solutions for mobile phones.
It seems there’s already some question over the speedy deal that was made with HP and Palm’s board without stockholder knowledge beforehand… There’s already a class action lawsuit being setup by shareholders:
http://www.zlk.com/palm.html
I admit, I am a bit disappointed at the price point that was settled on, being a PALM stockholder myself… I stand to lose a bit of money on this deal (not enough to really be upset over really).
Well would you look at that. Apparently it isn’t just big corporations that sue when they don’t like how something is progressing…
As for the deal, I think it’s good news for Palm, HP and the loyal customers of both companies. WebOS is certainly a very nice piece of kit and it would be a shame to see it rotting on a shelf somewhere, and HP have the wherewithal to manufacture some decent hardware for it to run on.
Time to stock up on the popcorn and get a comfy chair…
And now a second law firm has announced intent to investigate the acquisition:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100428007249/en/Robbins-Ume…
It seems there’s quite a few people upset over this sale…
Update: make that 3 of them:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100428007223/en/Finkelstein…
Edited 2010-04-29 00:03 UTC
Wow, the lawyers are all over this like nobody’s business:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100428007259/en/Law-Offices…
Tablet + WebOS + Competitive Pricing + Flash/Silverlight (Netflix streaming) support = I will definitely buy it.
Edited 2010-04-28 22:35 UTC
runjorel posted…
And a pony too, right?
–bornagainpenguin
Hopefully no more creepy commercials now from Palm…
Take the WebOS interface, port it to android. You have an interface like SenseUI on HTC and as much as I like that, having the webOS on an android would be awesome, and you get immediate access to all those apps.
“Take the WebOS interface, port it to android. You have an interface like SenseUI on HTC and as much as I like that, having the webOS on an android would be awesome, and you get immediate access to all those apps.”
uh. after having replaced my droid with a palm pre. i wouldn’t want that. palm has lots of apps already. and most of the games for palm pre are way better than the games for android. there are some app omissions that i would like to see added. but i wouldn’t go back to android after having tasted the webos. it’s just simply better, more intuitive, easier. the music player app is better, so is the video player app. and so is the touchstone charging. i really hope palm sticks with the touchstone charging system it rocks.
Looking forward to HP Slate with WebOS!
Luckily Carly has left the HP butcher’s office, so hopefully Palm has some chances to survive (differently from other brands that HP has bought in the recent past)
Im an android fan but i can say without a doubt webos as it stands now is THE BEST mobile os available right now
my wife and kids all have pres and i had to do little or no configuring or teaching them how to navigate the ui they “just got it”. The card metaphor is excellent especially for multitasking. My hope is that HP leaves the PALM brand intact and only supports them financially
I hope to see more phones from palm. But i also hope hp pushes palm to release a tablet (arm powered) with webos.
I swore i wouldnt buy another hp device because of their horrid power supply connectors but if they let palm be independent then i wont mind buying a device from them even if hp gets the profits in the end.
I think HP is paying 1.2 billion for this OS only, I don’t see any interest from them to develop any palm phones. HP only cares about “HP Experience”…
Now this acquisition is less controversial than Oracle acquiring Sun.
But anyway, this will still guarantee WebOS’s optimal position in the mobile OS market. I personally tried Android and it looks like a dead end system quality-wise. So yeah, more power to WebOS.
HP is working at making Windows redundant.
It won’t be on the desktop right away. It will take awhile. But with HTML5 and Ajax what can’t you write application wise for web browsers.
Next, what about SunOffice/OpenOffice? That would give HP and office suits. Sorry but Sun just didn’t seem to know what to do with Star/Sun/Open Office after awhile. I don’t think Oracle knows what to do with it/how to take advantage of owning it. Maybe HP can do more with it.
Please note: The people outside of Sun seem to know what to do with OpenOffice. Sun/Oracle still owns the rights the StarOffice or whatever it was last called.
Anyway, webos is HP’s way of making Windows redundant starting at the low end and they will work their way up. YES, WebOS with HTML5 and Ajax (if they use that) will let them work their way up the chain of their computers.
Does HP now own BeOS?