HP Buys Palm

29/4/2010

In a sudden move, HP have bought Palm, the maker of the latest Pre and golden oldie, the iPaq.  This is actually a good thing for Palm that has been losing it’s share progressively over recent years, indeed, even with questions of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year. 

Whilst it may have been a flag bearer for Smartphones back in the noughties, it’s nots been able to keep pace with the iPhone and, more recently, Android platform phones.  The price paid by HP? $1.2 billion. 

This all seems to have been in response to HP’s wish to regain a foothold in the mobile phone market.  But as David Garrity, principal at GVA Research LLC in New York has pointed out “Just because H-P now has a smartphone in its lineup doesn’t mean people are going to wake up tomorrow and say, ‘Aha, this is the next Apple’. There are obviously a lot of things Apple has in terms of its iTunes store and apps that H-P doesn’t have”.

On the plus side though, Smartphones have the fasted growing segment of the mobile phone market. Worldwide smartphone shipments are set to rise to 247 million units in 2010, up 36 percent from 182 million in 2009, according to ISuppli Corp.