HP in the Smartphone business

MIke R

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #1

having just bought Palm for 1.2 Billion

 

NYCFred

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #2

 

NYCFred

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #3

PALO ALTO, Calif. & SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HP (NYSE: HPQ - News) and Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM - News) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

 

MIke R

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #4

this was a lifeline for Palm..they were clearly on their way out....be interesting to see what HP does with it

 

JEK

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #5

They overpaid by about a B give or take.

 

MIke R

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #6

yeah I agree, the stock was clearly on its way to a buck a share, but if we know that...somebody in HP had to know that as well.....unless they needed the technology right away for reasons which remain to be seen...

or it was a dumb deal.....62% of takeovers do not work out favorably for the taker....we'll see

 

JEK

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #7

Apple has a smartphone. Dell has a smartphone. I need a smartphone.

 

J

JoshA

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #8

WebOS is a well-thought-out smartphone OS from Palm. RIM or HTC would have made a lot of sense as an acquirer. HP? Not so much.

 

JEK

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #9

The (desperate) acquired isn't in much of a position to determine who is ready to trade. Palm has nothing the big boys want.

 

J

JoshA

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #10

Last I looked, HP is pretty big. But they are too diverse and unlikely to make a good smartphone. HTC and RIM are focused on smartphones.

 

JEK

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #11

If they wanted the Palm IP all that had to do was top the bid.

 

MIke R

Senior Insider

• Apr 28, 2010

• #12

maybe its not about smartphones at all.....maybe its about HP wanting Palms Operating System to cut out Microsofts OS in their machines and save all that royalty pay out...

 

Petri

Senior Insider

• Apr 29, 2010

• #13

Perhaps they just calculated that the get the money back from the IP royalties from other players. HP has plenty of patents themselves so they have more suck^H^H^H^Hlawyers to make it work.