And then there were six
"We're thrilled by HP's vote of confidence in Palm's technological leadership, which delivered Palm webOS and iconic products such as the Palm Pre. HP's longstanding culture of innovation, scale and global operating resources make it the perfect partner to rapidly accelerate the growth of webOS," said Jon Rubinstein, chairman and CEO of Palm.
The press release says Rubenstein (pictured) is expected to remain with the company and, considering HP hasn't exactly set the world on fire in the mobile device market, it could do worse than keep the guy behind the iPod.
This move means there are now six major players in the smartphone OS market, all coming at it from different directions. Apple operates a closed system and is the master consumer electronics company, Google's Android has huge momentum and is strongest in its connection with the cloud.
WP7 will unite Microsoft many disparate software and services assets, while MeeGo is fully open source and has the world's biggest handset maker (Nokia, which also supports the Symbian platform) and its dominant CPU maker (Intel) behind it. Blackberry is suddenly looking a tad exposed.
All six will claim USPs: the iPhone and iPad speak for themselves, Android is flexible, popular and great for Google cloud services, WP7 will be good for productivity and gaming, MeeGo is expected to be strong in convergent devices like netbooks and slates, while Blackberry is still synonymous with mobile email.
How HP will position its new OS will be interested. As a company its strength is more as a B2B operator rather than a consumer one. That puts it more directly into conflict with WP7 and Blackberry as it will look to persuade its enterprise customers that they should buy their mobile devices as well as their PCs, servers and services from HP.
The result of this acquisition, which is expected to complete by the end of July, is an even more competitive, but even more fragmented mobile OS market. Companies that can offer apps and services across platforms will be more important than ever, and we wait with bated breath to see what the world's biggest PC maker (we consider Apple a consumer electronics outfit) does with its new toy.
