We are getting some early reports today that Amazon might be eyeing HP’s failed Palm! Amazon has already been in the spot light with the Kindle fire launch and now might take its assault on the iPad to the next level by buying the Palm from HP for a steal! A well-informed industry insider has told VentureBeat VB that Amazon is deep in discussion with Hewlett-Packard HP regarding the possible purchase of smartphone division Palm.Although currently nothing more than spurious rumour, any such acquisition of Palm would likely include the company’s acclaimed webOS mobile operating system, which has been utilized in HP’s now defunct TouchPad tablet and other smartphone devices.
Former Palm chief executive officer Jon Rubenstein, who now serves as head of product innovation at HP and is also a board member at Amazon, has recently indicated that Amazon would be a good business fit. “I would say Amazon would certainly make a great partner, because they have a lot of characteristics that would help them expand the webOS ecosystem,” he told technology blog This Is My Next during the summer. “As to whether there’s been discussions or not… that’s obviously not something I’m going to comment about,” he added, which we’re interpreting as a thinly veiled ‘yes, there have been discussions’.When approached for an official response regarding the story, neither HP nor Amazon was willing to offer anything more tangible than the stock standard ‘we don’t comment on rumors and speculation’.
HP splashed a massive $1.2 billion USD on the purchase of Palm back in 2010, after which it channeled webOS and the company’s significant mobile know-how into the development of the TouchPad tablet and Veer smartphone.The TouchPad tablet and webOS platform were formally retired in August due to poor sales connected to the much-hyped mobile computer, which had its card punched soon after Best Buy revealed it had sold only 25,000 units of its 270,000 allocation.
[ThetechHerald]