HP buys Palm
HP agreed to buy Palm for $1.2 billion.
Which is friggin awesome.
I have made no bones about the fact that I love webOS and my Palm Pre. As in I think that it is by far the best mobile OS currently in existence (and I have the support of a lot of the tech news world on that one - though the Pre hardware gets knocks vs some of the competition).
And now - Palm will have the money, support, and scale to build lots of fantastic phones with great hardware across a range of devices, all running webOS.
HP has said that it will "double down" on webOS, and also that they like its ability to "scale." Which basically means we will be seeing a webOS tablet PC, which is fantastic. HP is of course the world's largest computer maker, and one that I quite like. I have three HP computers, and all of them have treated me well. HP has moved away from the PDA/smartphone market, but obviously now recognizes that you can no longer be a major 'computer' maker and not make smartphones (small computers that happen to make phone calls). They do still currently make iPaq phones (I thought they had stopped...) but sell them only to enterprise customers as far as I can tell, and they all run Windows Mobile 6.x = crap.
I have to say, I am really happy with this outcome. A webOS tablet would be sweet, mostly because of one major distinction vs. the iPad: multitasking. Real, legit, multitasking. You know, like you use your real computer for. Right now, this laptop has 14 programs open, my Pre has 6 open, and I can hardly imagine using a computer one program at a time. Not to mention that webOS is beautifully easy to navigate and understand (as in it takes no time at all - and you dont need program managers or anything like that).
Basically, I can't wait for a new wave of webOS devices with more and fancier harware, not to mention a webOS tablet. A Pre v.2 with a larger screen, the Pre+ internals but with a 1gHz chip instead of 600mHz and running on Sprint's 4G network would be my #1 order of the day. That would be sweet.
But there is a lot more to offer. From Engadget:
"The future possibilities are endless: netbooks / netvertibles that dual boot webOS and Windows or even run webOS as a software layer, pure webOS tablets / smartbooks that get hours of battery life, webOS smartphones that dock into HP touch PCs and share their apps and settings -- hell, we'd even love to see HP take its touchscreen printer line to the next level with a healthy dose of webOS. Talk about the world's first web-connected printer."
But really - this also means the growth of webOS across multiple platforms and as a legitimate contender to Windows Phone 7, Android, iPhone OS, and Blackberry and Nokia assuming those two ever get their act together.
w00t w00t
Which is friggin awesome.
I have made no bones about the fact that I love webOS and my Palm Pre. As in I think that it is by far the best mobile OS currently in existence (and I have the support of a lot of the tech news world on that one - though the Pre hardware gets knocks vs some of the competition).
And now - Palm will have the money, support, and scale to build lots of fantastic phones with great hardware across a range of devices, all running webOS.
HP has said that it will "double down" on webOS, and also that they like its ability to "scale." Which basically means we will be seeing a webOS tablet PC, which is fantastic. HP is of course the world's largest computer maker, and one that I quite like. I have three HP computers, and all of them have treated me well. HP has moved away from the PDA/smartphone market, but obviously now recognizes that you can no longer be a major 'computer' maker and not make smartphones (small computers that happen to make phone calls). They do still currently make iPaq phones (I thought they had stopped...) but sell them only to enterprise customers as far as I can tell, and they all run Windows Mobile 6.x = crap.
I have to say, I am really happy with this outcome. A webOS tablet would be sweet, mostly because of one major distinction vs. the iPad: multitasking. Real, legit, multitasking. You know, like you use your real computer for. Right now, this laptop has 14 programs open, my Pre has 6 open, and I can hardly imagine using a computer one program at a time. Not to mention that webOS is beautifully easy to navigate and understand (as in it takes no time at all - and you dont need program managers or anything like that).
Basically, I can't wait for a new wave of webOS devices with more and fancier harware, not to mention a webOS tablet. A Pre v.2 with a larger screen, the Pre+ internals but with a 1gHz chip instead of 600mHz and running on Sprint's 4G network would be my #1 order of the day. That would be sweet.
But there is a lot more to offer. From Engadget:
"The future possibilities are endless: netbooks / netvertibles that dual boot webOS and Windows or even run webOS as a software layer, pure webOS tablets / smartbooks that get hours of battery life, webOS smartphones that dock into HP touch PCs and share their apps and settings -- hell, we'd even love to see HP take its touchscreen printer line to the next level with a healthy dose of webOS. Talk about the world's first web-connected printer."
But really - this also means the growth of webOS across multiple platforms and as a legitimate contender to Windows Phone 7, Android, iPhone OS, and Blackberry and Nokia assuming those two ever get their act together.
w00t w00t
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