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For a company to buy an OS for $1.2 billion, then spend a fortune on developing a new class of device only to ditch it a month after launch along with it's enti
by iuguy 15y ago
For a company to buy an OS for $1.2 billion, then spend a fortune on developing a new class of device only to ditch it a month after launch along with it's entire infrastructure business, to then pay a massive premium for a software company in one particular space says an awful lot about the thought processes in HP. I can only assume that whoever makes the decisions has been prescribed something very, very powerful.
- bradleyland 15y agoIt's important to remember that there was some significant change in leadership during this sequence of events. Mark Hurd was CEO of HP at the time they bought Palm. The current CEO, Leo Apotheker, wasn't all that crazy about the product, and from what I've read in other places, was looking for a reason to can it. IMO, webOS devices didn't get a fair shot at HP. I believe that in hindsight, webOS will go down in history as one of those great operating systems that died for reasons not related to it's quality as an OS. You also have to consider that making $1.2bn back on the Palm purchase wouldn't be all that difficult right now. HP has the straight forward option of simply selling the Palm patent portfolio of 1,600 patents from a company that was in the handheld device space long before most of the current players.
- jordan0day 15y ago"I believe that in hindsight, webOS will go down in history as one of those great operating systems that died for reasons not related to it's quality as an OS." Yes. I would say that webOS will more than likely be the beOS of the mobile world. Not that the two OS's are similar technologically, but in that they're both generally held in fairly high esteem but no one actually uses them.