HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion • Hacker News Board

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#61

Post by armandososa » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:23 PM UTC

aschobel wrote: post #40

locopati wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

afaik webos has the best multi-tasking system out there and the easiest entry point (since it's just js, css & html)

"Best" in what sense? Android's life-cycle and Bundles makes a developer think about saving app state information from day one. Something as simple as a configuration change, rotating orientation, recreates your Activity. Since creating and destroying your activity is such a common occurrence you are forced to save the state info. When the OS needs to kill a background activity to free up space it tends to work. Real…

I think it's "Best" interface-wise. The cards metaphor is awesome.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#62

Post by armandososa » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:25 PM UTC

TotlolRon wrote: post #42

minouye wrote: post #7

So Palm = Groupon? http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/groupon-raises-huge-new-rou...

An apple and orange may sell at some day at some market to some buyer for roughly the same price. Doesn't make apple == orange.

That's a very good insight.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#63

Post by dnsworks » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:25 PM UTC

simonsquiff wrote: post #57

dnsworks wrote: post #54

I have to think that HP could just throw $100m at the problem and build an embedded OS that's far better than Palm, without having to take on the assets of a long-since failed corporation.

That would take them how long? Buying Palm they get that now.

Probably a lot quicker than it will take to save the sinking ship that is Palm. Sure this is a market penetration play, but why? Palm was a failure. PalmOS was a failure. WebOS might be cool, but the damage is done. Google is making good penetration into the mobile market, and they didn't need to buy grandpa to do so.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#64

Post by hernan7 » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:26 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #29

mos1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view 'Sent from my BlackBerry / iPhone' as a way of explaining why the email is so short.

Did BlackBerry start putting those messages in first, before Apple did the iPhone?

Lots of "sent from my Blackberry" footers in the Enron email corpus (ca 2000-2001)

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#65

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:31 PM UTC

Dear HP:

Please don't mess this up.

You're a storied pioneer in tech, but you got massive and lost your sense of direction. You're about to acquire something of a microcosm of yourself—a company that pioneered an industry but lost its way as it grew.

The difference is that your new acquisition rediscovered its sense of curiosity and turned itself around, too late to save itself, but brilliantly so nonetheless. You can learn from this. Your size has protected you from Palm's fate, but you were slowly headed down the same path, despite even your well-intentioned yet insufficiently-pursued experiments with things like TouchSmart.

While this is a new beginning for Palm, it's also a new beginning for you. What's your tagline again? Ah, yes: Invent. There's never been a better time to make good on it.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#66

Post by jsz0 » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:34 PM UTC

jxcole wrote: post #22

"Palm’s unparalleled webOS platform" Question: is Palm's web os platform really unparalleled? Or is it quickly falling behind the race that is now dominated by iPhone and android?

WebOS is unique but I wouldn't be generous enough to say unparalleled at this point. I don't think either Android or iPhone have leaped too far ahead in the last year. Android 2.x offers very little in terms of new end user features over 1.x and iPhone OS is evolving at a faster pace but if you take multitasking out of the picture (which WebOS already had) it's only an incremental improvement. The big issue of course is third party interest where the iPhone is way out in front of the pack.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#67

Post by mixmax » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:34 PM UTC

megaduck wrote: post #46

HP's getting a hell of a deal here. They're now a major player in the mobile devices market, overnight. Palm has current relationships with the three biggest American cell carriers, plus channels in Canada, France, Germany, UK, and Mexico. Palm also has an extensive patent portfolio, many of which Apple is infringing upon. However, the real prize is WebOS. I just got back from Palm's Developer Day, and their technolo…

"This deal (...) gives HP all the things they need to go head-to-head with Apple."

Except for the one thing that makes apple products special: Design.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#68

Post by antirez » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:35 PM UTC

jbellis wrote: post #60

dnsworks wrote: post #54

I have to think that HP could just throw $100m at the problem and build an embedded OS that's far better than Palm, without having to take on the assets of a long-since failed corporation.

Big companies are terrible at solving problems by throwing $millions at them. Depressing, but true.

Then acquire a startup that is inside that business. Take it separated from yourself, but just provide enough money for them to continue working better, faster, with more people.

Tell them what you need. Not interms of specifications, you as a big company are not good about it probably, everything will be too much formal and the resulting code will suck. Just tell your start up the final result, the user experience.

I think this stuff is doable, just can't understand why companies don't do it. I mean if you are going to acquire a company and this is a successful company in its market this makes sense. But with Palm what they are getting is more or less only the technology and the people.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#69

Post by RyanMcGreal » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:35 PM UTC

Can't be worse than buying Compaq.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#70

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Apr 28, 2010, 9:35 PM UTC

simonsquiff wrote: post #57

dnsworks wrote: post #54

I have to think that HP could just throw $100m at the problem and build an embedded OS that's far better than Palm, without having to take on the assets of a long-since failed corporation.

That would take them how long? Buying Palm they get that now.

Seen in those terms, and given the speed at which mobile is developing right now, this is worth way more than $100m.

Think of it as $100m for a great mobile OS and $1.1billion for a time machine.