HP CEO says he didn't buy Palm for smartphones

By on Jun 2, 2010 at 8:52 PM
News June 2, 2010

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“We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business.” Those were words the of HP CEO Mark Hurd as he spoke to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch technology summit on Wednesday. Going further, Hurd said that theory that HP was going to throw money into developing new smartphones featuring webOS “doesn’t in any way make any sense.” So why on earth did HP buy Palm? Patents. Owning the rights to webOS and Palm’s treasure trove of patents means HP will easily and affordably be able to create a unified experience across the “tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices” including but not limited to printers and tablets. Here’s the quote in its entirety.

“We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP. The WebOS is one of the two ground-up pieces of software that is built as a web operating environment [...] We have tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices [...] Now imagine that being a web-connected environment where now you can get a common look and feel and a common set of services laid against that environment. That is a very value proposition.”

Anyone else have the feeling some poor soul in HP’s PR department is at this very moment slaving over a statement that goes something like this: “HP is very committed to the development of webOS-based smartphones”?

[Via PreCentral]

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  • Garion

    So “we’re going to double down on WebOS” actually meant; “we’re going to kill WebOS on smartphones?

  • PrivateBlinky

    HP is just honestly (though not-so-taticfully) telling us what we already assumed, that they wanted Palm for the patents, not to keep the floundering Palm-brand devices afloat. Kudos for being clear on your intentions, HP, but next time, don’t make your newly-aquired products sound like excess baggage, okay?

    IMO, 6 competing platforms (WM, Apple, Google, RIM, Palm, Symbian) provided just enough smartphone market fragmentation in North America that evenutally one of the companies would end up getting the short end of the competition stick, it just turned out to be Palm (for now).

    Going back to the statments, this could also just be one big huffnpuff to throw people’s future guesses off the mark…

  • I told you so.com

    as stated before they are not getting rid of WeboS phones, go over to precentral.net and read his interview today to clear up this rumor. As stated he defines smartphones as connected devices and will be designing smartphones along with tablets and printers using WebOS. So stop stating the wrong people, Hurd has a bigger picture in mind.

  • Gauntlet Down

    They’re paying a “billion plus” (1.2, 1.4, whatever) THEN they are “doubling down”.

    Sounds like billions to me!

    But, for the sake of ending the argument, I can modify the original words to say:

    >>> “Paying a BILLION dollars for webOS is insanity incarnate”

    HPQ should have thrown money at Google instead.

    A =lot= LESS money.

    [the silly argument that HPQ has billions of cash so they can waste a billion here and a billion there is...silly]

  • http://hubpages.com/hub/mark-hurd mark hurd

    good information too much good man thank you very much.

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