It’s no secret that HP is looking to sell its webOS division and a new report suggests that Oracle may be one of the interested parties. While it’s likely not to happen, if Oracle did buy webOS, don’t expect the enterprise-data company to launch into the commercial or enterprise mobile and tablet space, as it would likely be interested in this simply to screw over Google.
We’ve gone over the ever-so-short life and death of webOS before but for those of you not up to speed, the elegant smartphone operating system was meant to resurrect Palm and was truly innovative when it first debuted. Palm didn’t have the resources to truly compete against the likes of Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft, so it sold to HP for more than $1 billion. HP introduced a few webOS products including the TouchPad but soon decided to axe webOS as the company moves toward the higher-margin enterprise services market.
With its leadership still in a bit of a mess, HP is looking to sell off its webOS assets and we’ve heard of various companies interested but this report is the first time we’ve heard Oracle’s name mentioned. This actually makes a lot of sense because Oracle is suing Google over Java patents in Android and the webOS unit would have a lot of patents which would allow Oracle to go after Google even more.
Even if Oracle’s interest was true, don’t expect a deal any time soon, if ever, as there is still probably some bad blood between HP and Oracle. Last year, HP’s Mark Hurd resigned after some embarrassing quasi-sexual issues came up and he was immediately hired by Oracle. Additionally, Oracle’s CEO was very public about how bad HP’s decision was to let Hurd go.
It looks like the webOS saga lives on …
[Via Reuters]