Technology HP Buys Palm for $1.2B

[xanthomondo]

Not sure if anyone cares here, but I'm happy... I was getting a little worried about the future of my Pre. I hope HP puts WebOS to good use.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/HP-sh...html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co (NYSE:HPQ - News) said it has struck a deal to buy Palm Inc (NasdaqGSALM - News) for $1.2 billion, offering a 23 percent premium to expand into the smartphone market.

The news comes after much speculation on Wall Street about the future of Palm, which once dominated the market but which has been overshadowed by rivals like Apple Inc's (NasdaqGS:AAPL - News) iPhone or Research in Motion's (Toronto:RIM.TO - News) BlackBerry.

Under the deal approved by the two companies' boards of directors, HP will pay $5.70 cash per share of Palm, a 23 percent premium to its closing price on Wednesday of $4.63.

Palm's current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company, HP said in a statement, adding that it expects the acquisition to close during its third fiscal quarter ending July 31.

Some investment banking sources had thought that Lenovo (HKSE:0992.HK - News) was the leading candidate to buy Palm after the U.S. firm was rebuffed by other potential Asian buyers including HTC Corp (Taiwan:2498.TW - News) and Huawei (HWT.UL).

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[1UP]

I didn't see that coming.

 

[StatCoder]

It definitely is a surprise rescue of webOS by HP. Word is that there was no other real bidder for Palm so there is some question as to whether HP overpaid. However, $1.2B for a company that has revenues over $100B per year isn't much to worry about.

WebOS, however, is a failed platform thus far. If it failed due to lack of capital resources then HP might be able to turn it around. HP is one of those technology consumer product names that everybody knows but no one really lusts after like Apple.

So, what does this mean for the HP Slate? I'm sure it's coming with Windows 7 in the next few months but there will presumeably be another tablet coming based on webOS. Developers will be left guessing which one will be the dominant platform for HP tablets.

 

[JacobSilge]

While this is certainly good news for the Palm brand, I don't know so much if this is a savior of WebOS, which has basically flopped. I wouldn't be completely shocked by a WebOS being downgraded to a "WebUI" built on top of Android at some point (I believe they are based on the same kernel), though a WebOS (or WebOS inspired) Tablet sounds interesting...

 

[omniatlas]

Like I've previously said before (and before) again and again, don't be so quick to write off Palm.

Palm is not dead.

Long live WebOS.

 

[omniatlas]

WebOS, however, is a failed platform thus far.

Are you basing your opinion that is a failed platform based on sales? Because IMHO WebOS is ingenious, and whoever I've talked to that have used it also seem to love it.

 

[StatCoder]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/29/businessinsider-10-reasons-palm-failed-and-had-to-sell-to-hp-2010-4.DTL

Make no mistake: Palm's $1.2 billion buyout by HP is not something to celebrate. (Unless you bought Palm shares at $1.14 in December '08.)

Palm was on its way to going out of business, and HP saved it because it thinks WebOS can kill Windows. (Good luck.)

Meanwhile, there's no bidding war going on right now.

Why not? Because Palm 3.0 -- under Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple executive -- was a failure.

The company did a decent technical job building a new mobile platform, WebOS, which is basically what HP is buying.

But everything was too little, too late.

 

[omniatlas]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/29/businessinsider-10-reasons-palm-failed-and-had-to-sell-to-hp-2010-4.DTL

Make no mistake: Palm's $1.2 billion buyout by HP is not something to celebrate. (Unless you bought Palm shares at $1.14 in December '08.)

Palm was on its way to going out of business, and HP saved it because it thinks WebOS can kill Windows. (Good luck.)

Meanwhile, there's no bidding war going on right now.

Why not? Because Palm 3.0 -- under Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple executive -- was a failure.

The company did a decent technical job building a new mobile platform, WebOS, which is basically what HP is buying.

But everything was too little, too late.

Article kind of contradicts itself -- from the couple of lines you've reposted from the article above:

-- If there was no bidding war, why did HP buy Palm at its over estimated value?
-- Palm 3.0 under Jon Rubinstein was a failure, yet WebOS was a decent technical job????

 

[Slevin]

Article kind of contradicts itself -- from the couple of lines you've reposted from the article above:

-- If there was no bidding war, why did HP buy Palm at its over estimated value?

If there was a bidding war, why didn't we hear about it?
Kraft foods over paid for Cadbury. Whenever a company buys out another typically they pay more than the current value of the outstanding shares. This isn't atypical

-- Palm 3.0 under Jon Rubinstein was a failure, yet WebOS was a decent technical job????

Palm is a failure, if it wasn't they wouldn't have been bought out, the company would not have failed. A company can have a good product and still fail, I don't know the merits of WebOS and it can be good OS but it failed to gain traction in the marketplace and finding a way to get products traction is the job of the CEO, the buck stops with him and thats why Palm is a failure.

 

[DrJosephKim]

HP has breathed new life into webOS. I'm sure we'll see some great new devices running webOS (smartphones and even slate tablets).

 

[deleted87716]

I just hope that developers don't give up on WebOS. It's one thing to revive the company, but a platform without applications is as good as dead.

 

[StatCoder]

HP/Palm is going to run into the same problem with the webOS tablet as they did with the webOS smartphone. There may be plenty of admirers among tech reviewers who like the non-Apple competition but in order to get someone to actually buy the device they are going to have to provide a tangle reason to pick it over the iPad and Android competition.

The webOS smartphones at least could attract loyal Sprint users as their premier smartphone when they were launched. Verizon users, however, couldn't find a reason to buy the Pre in significant numbers when they also had the Droid and Blackberry devices to choose from.

You really have to ask yourself why someone would walk into a store, try an iPad, several Android tablets, Windows 7 tablets, and decide that a webOS tablet is for them. So, what will the webOS tablet do best?

 

[deleted87716]

Well, I just bought a Palm Pre Plus. What the hell...it was only $30. I spent more on accessories, of course.

 

[omniatlas]

Well, I just bought a Palm Pre Plus. What the hell...it was only $30. I spent more on accessories, of course.

Hows the experience so far?

 

[Slevin]

Well, I just bought a Palm Pre Plus. What the hell...it was only $30. I spent more on accessories, of course.

If the pre doesn't workout you can use it as an expensive paperweight

 

[xanthomondo]

Well, I just bought a Palm Pre Plus. What the hell...it was only $30. I spent more on accessories, of course.

Welcome to the club!

 

[TMP-SMX]

My fiancée has the original Palm Pre. She got it for very cheap from Sprint. Is the Plus much faster? I think the phone is great but the lack of apps and slow rendering is the drawback.

 

[xanthomondo]

My fiancée has the original Palm Pre. She got it for very cheap from Sprint. Is the Plus much faster? I think the phone is great but the lack of apps and slow rendering is the drawback.

I had twice the memory. The same processor, though.

To speed up the phone I recommend overclocking. I put mine to 800 mhz (from 500) and it has made a world of difference. It's really easy and to get the files go here:

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/243857-new-super-pre-kernel-app-smokin.html

I would also recommend putting the preware application (www.preware.org) on your phone too. Here you can get apps that aren't in the app catalog and other goodies like themes and patches. The patches are some random helpful things like putting a timestamp in each SMS message and being able to add new pages to the launcher. I also installed the battery temperature display to make sure the phone didn't overheat from overclocking.

Lastly (for Bluedog/verizon people) I would call verizon up and activate My Mobile Hotspot. It's free but they won't enable it unless you call and activate it. This is the program that lets you access the internet on your computer via your phone (it's suprisingly really not that slow, either).

 

[deleted87716]

Hows the experience so far?

Pretty good. I have a Mac, so I got Missing Sync so I can synchronize my calendar, contacts, bookmarks, etc. Worked like a charm. I also downloaded Classic so I can run the StatCoder apps, iSilo, and a few other things that aren't yet available in a native WebOS version. Classic is pretty impressive, as well.

If the pre doesn't workout you can use it as an expensive paperweight

Not so expensive. Thirty bucks, remember?

Welcome to the club!

Thanks. I'm planning to spend a lot of time browsing precentral.net in order to learn as much as I can.

My fiancée has the original Palm Pre. She got it for very cheap from Sprint. Is the Plus much faster? I think the phone is great but the lack of apps and slow rendering is the drawback.

I haven't noticed that rendering is particularly slow. I'm used to a phone being somewhat slower than a laptop, but compared to my Centro, this thing is lightning fast.

I would call verizon up and activate My Mobile Hotspot. It's free but they won't enable it unless you call and activate it. This is the program that lets you access the internet on your computer via your phone (it's suprisingly really not that slow, either).

Mine worked right from the get-go. Very easy to set up, and surprisingly fast.

 

[TX_NFS]

+1 for the Pre here. I also have 'sped up' (overclocked) mine, but to just 600 MHz (I'm afraid for heat generation and lower battery life). I actually had one because my brother got one when they first launched on Sprint, but I didn't want to mess with it (or pay the $200+contract extension) then. I bought one used several weeks ago after losing a Blackberry and am pretty happy. I also just got a (used) Touchstone...mmm, inductive charging.


I really hope the platform survives for at least another two years, especially since HP has taken it over. Being released on the nation's three biggest carriers (Sprint, Verizon, and now AT&T) as well as various places overseas doesn't seem like that big of a failure to me;true, sales have been relatively low, but I don't think that's due to the fault of the device or OS itself- I'd say more due to advertising or just being 'new'.

 

[deleted87716]

I hope Palm comes out with some sort of update to fix some of the glaring problems with the Calendar app. It sucks. No agenda view, no search function, appointment times change when you cross time zones...WTF?

Plus, choosing dates using those scrolling lists is ridiculous. The date widget in Garnet made much more sense. The Calendar app in Garnet was so good, and this one is so bad. Whatever happened to the "Zen of Palm?"

 

[TX_NFS]

(Ignore, I fail at reading earlier posts.)

 

[omniatlas]

Meanwhile, there's no bidding war going on right now.

If there was a bidding war, why didn't we hear about it?

Here you go:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/16/hp-bought-palm-after-a-five-company-bidding-war/

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war

Palm and HP seem like the happiest of corporate couples right now, but theirs was a heated courtship: according to Palm's latest statement to shareholders, a total of 16 companies were contacted about a deal, and HP was the winner of a month-long bidding war that involved serious offers from five companies -- a bidding war that involved Jon Rubinstein personally warning HP that it had to "significantly and immediately" increase its offer to remain in the game. What's more, HP's winning bid came in at just 20 cents a share more than its primary rival. Yeah, it's juicy -- read on for the full blow-by-blow.

 

[1UP]

I'm impressed, with that many companies involved, they managed to keep it all completely under wraps.

Here you go:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/16/hp-bought-palm-after-a-five-company-bidding-war/

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war

Palm and HP seem like the happiest of corporate couples right now, but theirs was a heated courtship: according to Palm's latest statement to shareholders, a total of 16 companies were contacted about a deal, and HP was the winner of a month-long bidding war that involved serious offers from five companies -- a bidding war that involved Jon Rubinstein personally warning HP that it had to "significantly and immediately" increase its offer to remain in the game. What's more, HP's winning bid came in at just 20 cents a share more than its primary rival. Yeah, it's juicy -- read on for the full blow-by-blow.

 

[Slevin]

Here you go:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/16/hp-bought-palm-after-a-five-company-bidding-war/

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war

Palm and HP seem like the happiest of corporate couples right now, but theirs was a heated courtship: according to Palm's latest statement to shareholders, a total of 16 companies were contacted about a deal, and HP was the winner of a month-long bidding war that involved serious offers from five companies -- a bidding war that involved Jon Rubinstein personally warning HP that it had to "significantly and immediately" increase its offer to remain in the game. What's more, HP's winning bid came in at just 20 cents a share more than its primary rival. Yeah, it's juicy -- read on for the full blow-by-blow.

I stand corrected, however I would have still made the same comment because at the time there was no evidence that there was any other company besides HP involved.

 

[Slevin]

Well I wonder what this means for all those Palm Pre devices out there

“We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business.” Those were words the of HP CEO Mark Hurd as he spoke to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch technology summit on Wednesday. Going further, Hurd said that theory that HP was going to throw money into developing new smart phones featuring webOS “doesn’t in any way make any sense.” So why on earth did HP buy Palm? Patents. Owning the rights to webOS and Palm’s treasure trove of patents means HP will easily and affordably be able to create a unified experience across the “tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices” including but not limited to printers and tablets. Here’s the quote in its entirety.

If this is true I would start looking for alternatives to Palm smartphones, shows that HP will put minimal effort into the project

 

[deleted87716]

If this is true I would start looking for alternatives to Palm smartphones, shows that HP will put minimal effort into the project

Eh. I think that's reading too much into it. All he's saying is that they bought Palm mainly for WebOS, not for their hardware business. That was pretty much evident from the onset.

Without apps, however, WebOS won't gain traction on any platform. HP needs developers, just like Palm does. Smartphone sales will drive OS marketshare, which will entice developers. Hopefully.

Doesn't really matter to me, anyway. If they screw the pooch, I'll just switch to the iPhone that Verizon will almost certainly be offering by then.

 

[Slevin]

Eh. I think that's reading too much into it. All he's saying is that they bought Palm mainly for WebOS, not for their hardware business. That was pretty much evident from the onset.

Without apps, however, WebOS won't gain traction on any platform. HP needs developers, just like Palm does. Smartphone sales will drive OS marketshare, which will entice developers. Hopefully.

Doesn't really matter to me, anyway. If they screw the pooch, I'll just switch to the iPhone that Verizon will almost certainly be offering by then.

From the article

Hurd commented at a Bank of America Merill Lynch technology conference, "We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP. The webOS is one of the two ground-up pieces of software that is built as a web operating environment…We have tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices…Now imagine that being a web-connected environment where now you can get a common look and feel and a common set of services laid against that environment. That is a very value proposition."

He adds that the company isn't going to "spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn’t in any way make any sense."

Although later on the HP PR spin machine clarified their statement saying

When we look at the market, we see an array of interconnected devices, including tablets, printers, and of course, smartphones. We believe webOS can become the backbone for many of HP's small form factor devices, and we expect to expand webOS's footprint beyond just the smartphone market, all while leveraging our financial strength, scale, and global reach to grow in smartphones.

So really who knows but from the looks of it I'd say that the smartphone isn't going to be their main goal in acquiring Palm, it's more about the IP than the hardware.

I mean competition is great for companies, forces them to make a better product.

Althought I'm always reminded of this quote when talking about palm's smartphones

"PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.

- Ed Colligan in 2006

 

[deleted87716]

I maintain that HP's "doubling down on WebOS" doesn't negate the viability of the smartphone. It simply builds upon it. The smartphone is the most portable, affordable, and accessible "small form factor web-connected device." The additional quotes you provided reinforce that. Time, of course, will tell.

 

[Slevin]

I think they are talking about their web connected printers et al. They also say

He adds that the company isn't going to "spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn't in any way make any sense."

But time will tell.

I remember when HP sold their own branded version of the iPod many many moons ago. Not that that has any bearing on this discussion.

 

[StatCoder]

The current iPAQ lineup does show, though, that HP has the ability to maintain a once-popular line of devices in a persistent vegetative state.

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/handheld.html

 

[deleted87716]

The current iPAQ lineup does show, though, that HP has the ability to maintain a once-popular line of devices in a persistent vegetative state.

In that case, Palm and HP should get along just fine.