At the Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference, HP’s CEO Mark Hurd let slip something interesting about their acquisition of Palm:
[HP won’t] spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn’t in any way make any sense. … 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.
This position was already pretty clear when HP was talking about shoving webOS into tablets and printers in addition to phones. As much as I like webOS, I agree that buying Palm to get into the smartphone business would have been a poor move. After a few years, the Palm Pre and Pixi haven’t really picked up speed, and with Android running amok and existing animosity with Apple, they likely won’t any time soon. Does this mean HP is going to drop smartphones like a rock? No, probably not, but you’re probably going to see a webOS printer before you see a new Palm phone. Tablets are getting pretty hot these days, with Android, Apple, Microsoft, and maybe even RIM getting into the game, so a webOS slate seems likely if HP thinks they can adequately leverage their existing expertise with Palm’s special sauce. The point about the IP is also worth noting – there’s a giant vault full of Palm patents that alone were worth the acquisition, nevermind actually doing anything with them.
[via ZDNet]