HP to acquire Palm

nickmack

Could be interesting to see how this turns out...

HP and Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system...

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100428xa.html

OneADay

Wasting their money I say - the market is flooded with competitors who are ahead of them.

almillar

iPhone, Blackberry, Android, S60 - hardly flooded?! And webOS is the most advanced OS, so is furthest ahead, unless you're talking about sales...

BillScarab

almillar wrote: »

iPhone, Blackberry, Android, S60 - hardly flooded?! And webOS is the most advanced OS, so is furthest ahead, unless you're talking about sales...

Surely sales are what count? All o fthe above have large installed user bases so it's worth developing Apps for them. WebOS doesn't have a large user base so why would anyone want to spend time developing Apps? Wothout Apps will anyone want to to buy WebOS devices?

Whether WebOS is the best OS or not is irrelevant, being the best has never been a guarantee of success. Betamax was better than VHS, the Dreamcast was arguably better than the competition, the iPhone has been phenomally successful despite it's limitations.

almillar

When it takes a few hours to port your iPhone app over to WebOS, you might as well do it, no?
I really hope no-one out there is thinking 'Yep, I want a Palm, but I'm not going to buy one because more people have iPhones'. That mentallity means everyone will shop in Tesco, drive Fiestas, watch Sony TVs, eat out in McDonalds etc, etc...

gjchester

almillar wrote: »

When it takes a few hours to port your iPhone app over to WebOS, you might as well do it, no?

Steve Jobs has reportedly banned any apps build by cross compling software (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/09/apple_iphone_4_sdk_change/) so you either have to code for Apple Kit, or code for the world outside Apple. Apple have decided this so apps take full advantage of the Apple hardware rather than coding to the lowest possible denominator of the various platforms (Apple / Android / Symbian / Windows Mobile or WebOS).

If you are a developer you want to sell whatever you make, so to maximise that you'd be coding something for the most developed platform, ie the iPhone / iPad. It's not going to be a few hours to port it over, it's going to be a lot more.

almillar wrote: »

I really hope no-one out there is thinking 'Yep, I want a Palm, but I'm not going to buy one because more people have iPhones'.

Sorry you really don't get this do you.

The Pre is Dead, no-one really wanted it, it was too little too late. WebOS *MAY* live on but it's in intensive care at the moment. HP may revive it, they may let it limp on a while or may pull the plug.

People LOVE the iPhone.

It's small, sexy, easy to use, well supported by apps and yes friends have one. How many people have bought one because there friends have one, and it's the latest trendy gadget.

It may be hampered by no multitalking, but people don't care. It may have a poor camera, again people don't care. It's reported to have a so-so radio in it, again people don't care. The battery is non removeable, people don't care.

The iPhone is not a phone it's a fashion statement. Like any fashion statement not everyone will like it, but the indications are the masses do and do in droves.

Consider this the Desire and the Nexus one look very like a iPhone. Thats probably not because it's the ideal form factor, but immitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

BillScarab

The FTC are currently investigating Apple's stance and so Apple may be forced to reconsider.

I'd agree with your comments about the Pre and WebOS.

As for the Desire and Nexus One, yes there are similarities to the iPhone but personally I think it's more to do with squeezing a large touch screen into a phone and keeping the device relatively small. A phone with few buttons and a large screen is always going to look somewhat like an iPhone.

almillar

I do get it, and the Pre is NOT dead. The Pre Plus is starting to be sold in France, Spain and on AT&T in US, does that sound dead to you? You don't have to BEAT the iPhone to be successful, selling 1/10th as many phones would be a success.
It DOES take hours to port an app over to Web OS, why don't you ask the developers who have done it? I don't know a lot about Apple's new restrictions o development environments, but Palm hasn't enforced any, so having gone though the Apple hoops, the devs can still port that app over. You're allowed to code in C++ are you not, which is an open language?
And thank you for so succinctly pointing out what's wrong with the iPhone!

gjchester

almillar wrote: »

I do get it, and the Pre is NOT dead. The Pre Plus is starting to be sold in France, Spain and on AT&T in US, does that sound dead to you? You don't have to BEAT the iPhone to be successful, selling 1/10th as many phones would be a success.

And thank you for so succinctly pointing out what's wrong with the iPhone!

Look at the numbers as I previously said..

The reports of sales are well down, in the 3 months to Feb the FT says they sold a reported 408,000 Pre and Pixi Phones, in the same time Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones

Tha means in the first few months of Pre being on sale it sold less than 5% of the iPhone sales, and I'd bet thats tailed down as the initial hype and honeymoon period has faded.

Thats my point.

There are percieved issues with the iPhone form a IT power user point of view, but the general public really do not see these as problems. The numbers show that these issues that are percieved by some as faults really don't matter to the general public. To be honest some are nice to haves, I don't like the idea of a non replaceable battery but then again I've never replaced any of my phone batteries anyway, so if it's not removeable it's not as big an issue as I think it may be.

The Palm phones are availalbe in 5 or 6 countries worldwide, the iPhone is everywhere, and heavily advertised. Palm phones are getting no advertising, and no visable marketting. I'm currently on holiday (hence why this post is at 4am!) my last weeks experience.

The Metro has a full page iphone ad on the back page, promoting how the iphone can work for the world cup.
Magazines in the airport (ie to read on the plane) have Iphone ads in
Adverts in the Airport were iPhone and HTC Desire.
here in Malaysia there are iPhone ads everywhere, (and yes I relasie that is kinda an unfair comparision as the palm is not out)

Where is the palm advertising??? Other than that woman on rock advertising there has been nothing. and without that advertising WebOS and the Palm Phones will fail.

almillar

Less than 5% of the iPhones sold. Is that as many as they'd hoped to sell? No. Is it enough? Maybe not, considering they've been bough out. How many phones did Dell sell in that time for example? Just because you're not selling in the same league as Apple doesn't mean you can't survive.

gjchester

Looks like HP are not interestin the Pre and Pixi, they wanted WebOs and the IP behind it for there own devices.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/hp-ceo-mark-hurd-talks-datacenters-networking-and-palm/35312


The Palm acquisition had nothing to do with being in the smartphone business. Hurd said 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.” Hurd added:

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.