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HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#81
post #4

UGH poor Palm employees. I am so sorry.

Really? They should be grateful that they look to still have jobs. If Apple or Microsoft or Google bought them, a bunch of them would have been laid off.

HP's recent track record of purchase and lay-off has to be at least as good (bad?) as those three. And actually, having recently worked there and having kept in touch former co-workers, getting laid off from HP with some severance isn't so bad, compared to the alternatives.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#82
post #78

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…

Is there more information about the next OS version publicly available? It sounds pretty awesome.

Palm shot video of everything at the Developer Day, and should be posting it online soon at http://developer.palm.com.

If you're interested in taking a look, the Webkit/V8 MVC bits are all there today. The upcoming part is the ability to create event-driven javascript services of your own. At the moment, you're limited to the ones that Palm provides.

They've also got a lot of other really net web tech in the pipeline, including things like a pluggable data service on the device that automagically syncs to CouchDB servers in the cloud.

Also check out their Ares web-based development environment, which reached 1.0 recently. Very, very cool.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#83
post #66
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…

I would put both Android and iPhone OS 'way out in front of the pack' in terms of 3rd party development, if the 'pack' is Windows Phone 7 and WebOS

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#84
post #68
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Buying another company "instantly" transfer their assets/resources to you. The knowledgeable people, the patents, the deals with suppliers and clients, the brand.

Even with what could be considered infinite money, it takes time to build a Palm (and then there's the risk).

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#85

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…

I'm hopeful, but I'm expecting the worst. webOS seems to be a compelling technology, particularly because its SDK allows developers to use HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript which many more developers know and use than say Objective-C.

The reason I'm expecting the worst is that HP has never been a software company and not even Palm can change that.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#86

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 get that a lot of people like WebOS, but as a developer it seems like the worst POSSIBLE thing that could happen is for a third mobile OS to actually get traction. Back in the days when Palm ruled the PDA market, things were good, but they're hanging out in fourth or fifth place these days.

Regardless of merit of their respective UIs, the absolute best thing that could happen to the mobile space is if one completely open mobile OS became completely dominant. And pretty much the only reasonable contender for that role is Android.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't they the last major Windows Mobile player? This sounds like the last nail in WM's coffin.

HTC makes Windows Mobile/Phone devices. They just recently came out with the HD2 in the US.

I had hoped that HTC would discontinue making new Windows Mobile devices after Microsoft told them that Android stepped on their patents. Instead HTC is now 'licensing' these patents from MS. Still, it would have been funny if there were no major manufacturers for Windows Mobile.

http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-pay-royalties-microsoft-af...

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#88

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.

Been there, done that, and HP is not capable of developing a product from the ground up that will be competitive in the marketplace. For them the best option is definitely to buy. I hate to say it, but they're a company that's out of innovation and out of talent.

Re: HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion

#90
I guess HP figured out that when print media dies, it can't sell as many cartridges and figured it would tow along a sinking boat to its tanker ship.

Whatever the case may be, HP needs to put blinders on Palm. Palm needs to ultra focus on one good phone. How did they forget that they used to focus so well on the Treos that Blackberry seemed pale in comparison.

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