Hewlett Packard has completed acquisition of the Palm this week in a deal worth about US$1.2 billion. This also marks the culmination of the process that was first announced on the 28th of April. started HP has dropped some hints that there could be a possibility of them replacing the Windows 7 Home premium OS from Microsoft with the Palm’s WebOS in all its forthcoming tablet and slate ventures including the much talked about HP Slate device. HP had earlier shown off the Slate running Windows 7 but had failed to meet performance criterion.
Announcing the acquisition deal, Palo Alto from California based HP said, “Palm will be responsible for webOS software development and webOS-based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks”.
There had been some resistance on its takeover bid by HP by some section of Palm share holders. This however was settled when HP offered the price of $5.7 per share in June and is the reason why the acquisition process was delayed from April when it had been formally announced.
The Palm had been known for its OS even though that did not ensure a robust demand or sales of its gadgets in the market. Palm had fallen behind Apple and Research in Motion which can be attributed to the lengthy time it took to develop the WebOS so that by the time the operating system targeted towards mobile devices along with the Palm Pre was ready last year, the company’s profitability was dipping dangerously low. HP, keen to make its presence felt in the fast growing smartphone segment and had indicated its interest in the versatile mobile operating system the WebOS. This OS has been the one that powers the Pre and Pixi smartphones from Palm. Hp has now announced that they would be using the WebOS for their slate PC’s which would be coming up in future.
The question that now remains to be replied and seen is whether HP would be using this OS for it’s to be and much hyped Slate Tablet. The tablet had been displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show held in January this year and was touted as the gadget that can take on the high flying Apple iPad.
Things began to take interesting shapes from there after. The Slate was then running on the Windows 7 OS and there were strong rumors HP would release the tablet in the second half of 2010. Thereafter key specifications of the Slate began to do the rounds on the Internet. It was just a few weeks thereon that the technical press stated that a Windows 7 powered Slate has been cancelled.
Apple during the same time was showing to the world its tablet PC with the Apple iOS powered iPad. With HP moving towards the Palm there was doubt that prevailed if there ever would be a Window based tablet.
HP has not officially declared the OS it would be using with the Slate that they had displayed at the CES. There is still a chance that both the Windows 7 and the WebOS maybe powering the tablet from HP when it is released.
Keep watching for more developments on this along with all the other tablet pc or e-reader news.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
