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Shortly after the 2009 CES where Palm revealed its new WebOS, Hewlett-Packard dived in and acquired the cash poor phone Company for $1.8 billion. It was a high risk gamble to get into the phone and tablet market which now appears to have imploded.At the time I was the only Australian journalist at the event and it was clear that the real asset was Jon Rubinstein the CEO of Palm and a former Apple executive.
The only hope now is for a big Asian manufacturer to take over the Palm brand and the Web OS development team. One candidate could be Samsung, who despite claiming that they are “okay” with the recent acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google, “have their reservations” about the deal.
Last month I said that Hewlett Packard was facing a tough battle to get their new Web OS Touch Pad tablet established in Australia, after several overseas reviewers described the device as a “work in progress”.
In the US, the HP Web OS Tablet has bombed against tough competition from the likes of Apple, Samsung and a host of Android based devices.
Palm was a year into a major turnaround effort when HP last night put the operation up for sale, upon deciding to exit the PC and tablet market.
Samsung has their Bada OS, but what they don’t appear to have is an individual who really knows software, has an intimate understanding of how Apple operates and a track record of success in the devices market.
When HP bought Palm it inherited Palm’s hardware division, which created the Pre smartphone, and the software division, which built WebOS.
It also inherited Jon Rubinstein, one of the masterminds behind the original iPod, and the Godfather of the next-gen Palm hardware.
To snare Rubinstein and the Palm brand name would be quite a coupe for Samsung, as Rubinstein has the knowledge and the skill-set to steer it into a position of strength. While HP was juggling software, services and high end hardware, the struggling PC division was not getting the attention it deserved from the HP board.
At Samsung he could pull together offerings across PCs, notebooks, tablets and smartphones.
When Rubenstein joined Palm, the Company had lost the plot and a lot of market share for their once popular Treo devices.
Hired in 2007, Jon Rubinstein was one of the architects of the original iPod, who had retired from Apple in 2006.
They put him in charge of developing the yet-unannounced Palm Pre and the WebOS software it would run.
He showed the new Web OS offering in January 2009 at the CES show. It was Palm’s first generation device running a brand new operating system called WebOS, which touted “Synergy,” a feature that pulled in all your contacts’ information from all your email accounts with ease.
Also, the Pre had a cool inductive charging accessory called the Touchstone.
The Pre would go toe to toe with the incoming iPhone 3GS that summer. Then HP acquired the cash strapped company and everything seemed to fall apart.
The enterprise IT Company, who was struggling across several divisions including at board level, failed to quickly market the Palm offering and when they did with their new HP WebOS tablet, Google and Apple was way ahead of them.
The decision to get out of the PC market takes HP out of the consumer market, though it will continue to sell servers and other equipment to business customers.
