HPalm!

Bleh well.

After some intense speculation on the future of Palm, it finally turns out that HP has come out and snapped up the struggling mobile phone/OS maker. Palm, which bet big on it's Pre and Pixi handsets earlier in 2009 received a major jolt with major carriers not giving it enough attention and a rather creepy ad campaign to boot. HP on the other hand, used to operate a brand of smart phones called iPaq which came along with it's acquisition of Compaq but it's not been doing so well lately. Still built on an aging WinMo platform and some seriously sad hardware, HP earned just $25 million in revenues from the brand, down from $57 million same time last year.


So what's in it for HP? Dell has recently announced some pretty slicked looking smart phones for the coming quarters and it seems HP wants in on the pie. Palm has an impressive array of patents and IPR along with an OS which is often hailed as the best mobile OS. Palm, however, has not only been bogged down by a terrible ad campaign and carrier indifference, it has also suffered from bad hardware. HP isn't exactly known for their hardware quality mind you, their laptop line isn't very highly regarded in terms of durability either. What HP hopes to capitalize on is the expanding smart phone market which is increasingly showing exponential growth. With competing biggies like Apple, HTC, RIM and now Windows Phone 7, one hopes that HP-Palm (or HPalm) doesn't just become one more acquisition that fades away in a couple of years.