Originally posted on April 30, 2010 @ 1:06 am
Now, ailing company Palm is finally finding itself a savior from extinction. HP is looking at buying Palm, and they are shelling out $1.2 billion dollars to make the purchase. From the official press release:
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, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.
The combination of HP’s global scale and financial strength with Palm’s unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP’s ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets. Palm’s unique webOS will allow HP to take advantage of features such as true multitasking and always up-to-date information sharing across applications.
And if this doesn’t make things exciting enough, HP may actually put off its plans to release the upcoming Slate tablet computer in favor of a tablet computer running Palm’s WebOS. I’ve been watching WebOS since the Pre came out, and I must say that I’ve been disappointed at the WebOS phones’ floundering performance. It’s almost as good as Android, if you ask me. Now I believe that HP is trying to do an Apple and create computers and smartphones with their own OS running on it, instead of depending on Microsoft to release an update.
Would this work fantastically for HP or would it spell their downfall? I’d like to hear your opinions in the comments.