HP has bought Palm: the Silicon Valley giant has snapped up the struggling smartphone company for $1.2bn (£789m). It spells potentially fantastic news for fans of Palm’s webOS operating system, and potentially devastating news for the huge tech companies with many divisions to back up their own mobile efforts – players like Apple and Microsoft. With HP behind it, webOS isn’t going anywhere: read on to find out why.
A Windows Phone 7 partner now has its own OS
HP was one of the named partners at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 launch at Mobile World Congress in February, leading us to think that that iPAQ might be about to make a return to the big time. But by buying Palm, HP now owns the webOS platform – it may lack app support, but there’s no denying it’s fantastic to use. Microsoft will want all the partners it can get to sell Windows Phone 7 come Christmas, and one of the biggest may have just lost interest.
HP gives Palm scale
Palm no longer need fear being the underdog in an epic smartphone struggle. HP is one of the biggest IT companies in the world, with enough money to just slap down $1.2bn for a company and its clever mobile OS when it’s already tinkering with Windows Phone 7 and Android.
Desktop integration
Let’s be honest: even iTunes syncing on the iPhone is still a fairly unimaginative marriage of mobile and PC, letting you dump tunes and apps on, and little more. With HP, one of the world’s biggest PC manufacturers behind it, Palm could craft a much more tight experience. Imagine being able to pop your Palm Pre on a Touchstone charger, and have that link to the webcam in your HP laptop: then when you get calls at your desk, they’re forwarded straight to your screen for a video chat.
Tablets
Palm is already promising “webOS acceleration” from HP’s purchase, and we’re pretty sure that doesn’t just mean yet more Pre spin offs. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has said he’s open to the idea of webOS tablets before, and now that a company clearly itching to get in on the nascent consumer tablet market with the HP Slate is backing him up, we’re hopeful we’ll be seeing a webOS slate. With its multitasking and notification system, it really could go toe to toe with the iPad.
Office ware
Research In Motion has the corporate smartphone market sewn up with the BlackBerry line up, but HP and Palm could take it down by coming through the side door. HP’s already got a heavy office presence with its PCs and printing tech: if it could make webOS phones and tablets that play nice with them, printing off reports and documents with a tap over Wi-Fi, they’d suit a suit much more than an iPhone and iPad combination.
Smart-books
Why stop at tablets? HP’s pushing into the smart-book territory with the Snapdragon fuelled, Android HP Compaq Airlife 100. Given Palm’s obvious love for physical keyboards, webOS could translate perfectly to a small laptop form factor, and its card layout multitasking would certainly make for easier application switching than on Google’s mobile OS.
Patents aplenty
HP’s not just bought webOS and Palm’s execs: it’s snaffled up its treasure trove of technology patents too. Combined with its expertise, that spells not just future rock solid HP/Palm phones, but potentially better touchscreen controls on tablets and even desktop PCs. We’re still waiting on multitouch Macs to arrive, so now’s the perfect time for HP to up its game, and steal Apple’s thunder.
