My laptop bought my phone (HP buys Palm)

[Cringer]

HP Buys Palm | PreCentral.net



HP is buying Palm for $5.70 a share, or around $1.2 billion. More to come - conference call at 5pm EST - we'll be liveblogging it for sure. We have HP's Press Release after the break. The whole thing should be done by July 31st.
We're here to report on this breaking story, stay tuned. A quick read of the press release says that Jon Rubinstein will remain with the company - but it's not clear whether Palm as a brand will remain intact just yet - to say nothing of the rest of Palm's team and infrastructure. For webOS fans, the good news is that this isn't just a purchase for talent and patents, HP intends to continue on with webOS.
...keep it locked, folks.
Combination will accelerate HP’s growth within the more than $100 billion connected mobile device market

[Daimyo]

Saw this just now and came to post it... I haven't looked into it much, but superficially I'm not seeing how this is a great deal for HP.

[Cringer]

Sounds like they wanted webOS, and patents didn't hurt. Will find out more once the press conference happens. I am cool with this though, I can see HP slapping their name all over the phones but if webOS lives on and has many of the same people working on it to improve it, then all is good to me.

I just hope this doesn't delay the next webOS phone too long, my Pre needs replacing in a few months.

[stevew]

what's the deal with the Pre battery life Cringer? I've done everything I can thing of(turn down brightness, reduce how often it syncs with Gmail). It's like the worst battery I've ever seen. Plus the volume on the speaker is really weak.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by stevew

what's the deal with the Pre battery life Cringer? I've done everything I can thing of(turn down brightness, reduce how often it syncs with Gmail). It's like the worst battery I've ever seen. Plus the volume on the speaker is really weak.

The battery seems like a huge crapshoot to me on these phones. Some people get great life, some horrible. I think I am in the middle somewhere. I can drain the thing superfast with heavy non-stop usage though, that is for sure. The extended batteries are out there, I have never bought one though as I am usually close to a place to charge.


Here is another reason for HP to want webOS. I am reading a live blog of the press conference. HP showed Palm phones and a slate device on the same screen. Apple showed the way to do tablets/slates in a succesful way is probably with a mobile OS. I would buy a webOS tablet.

[Cringer]

Dola- HP will keep Palm intact as a separate unit with it's own management. Basically HP is going to give them money to play with and a chance to expand webOS onto other, bigger devices.

edit: Palm will be kept separate and as their own unit, but they didn't say if they will keep using the Palm name.

[cartman]

Most folks I deal with in the wireless dev space LOVE the WebOS. L-O-V-E it.

[Daimyo]

I guess what I don't understand is, if WebOS was the right OS for HP to use in phones and tablets, why hadn't they already licensed it? If WebOS made sense for HP they didn't have to buy the company to be able to use it...

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

I guess what I don't understand is, if WebOS was the right OS for HP to use in phones and tablets, why hadn't they already licensed it? If WebOS made sense for HP they didn't have to buy the company to be able to use it...

Probably because Palm said they would look at licensing webOS, but if you read between the lines they were probably going to want a big enough chunk of cash that it wasn"t the most attractive way to go.

Owning it outright is probably the best thing for both sides IMO. Actual input and control from HP on where they would like to see webOS go and the Palm people have to listen. Meanwhile it sounds like most of the Palm people will get to stick around and continue their work as planned with the extra butt-load of cash.

I mean crap, HTC now has to pay MS to use Google's OS, it's a crazy mobile OS world out there.

[sterlingice]

It's an interesting acquisition and actually makes sense to HP as they keep trying to move into more and more corners of the enterprise market. First you had HP with printers, high-end enterprise equipment, and laptops/desktops merge with Compaq's ISS-level servers (by way of Digital) and laptops/desktops in 2002. Now in the last couple of years, they've shelled out a lot of coin for EDS (services to compete with IBM), 3Com (switches to compete with Cisco), and now Palm (to get into the phone space). They really are trying to become the one stop shop for corporate IT and it's been working pretty well lately.

SI

[stevew]

WebOS HP/Palm tablet ASAP plzkthx.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by stevew

WebOS HP/Palm tablet ASAP plzkthx.

Actually I wouldn't want one until the holidays at the very earliest. I think developers start jumping on board webOS even more now and in six months time after new phone hardware has been announced (hopefully by June/July) and the HP deal is sealed that the App Catalog will have grown a ton.

More importantly though, I would like to see webOS modified slightly for a tablet. Mainly I would want to see some PC specific functionality thrown in like working with a printer, a native file system, the small details like that. webOS straight to a tablet now would be cool, but is still like (or even worse because of less apps) then the iPad is to me....not very useful.