HP Feels The Sting Of Buyer’s Remorse, May Sell WebOS For Hundreds of Millions

HP….what happened to you? You used to be so full of life. You made adequate desktop computers, and you were….umm. Ok, well I can’t actually think of anything noteworthy you did that I didn’t hate (and I hate all printers by default). But! You bought WebOS with such promise! Finally, a company with the means to fulfill the Palm vision. You have reach! You have scale! You have marketing experience! You have….wait, what? You’re selling WebOS? Oh f-…

Yes, according to Reuters “sources”, the “hardware giant” may be looking to “sell” WebOS and “piss away a whole lot of money in the process”. So they say. When HP bought WebOS from the dying Palm a little over a year ago, they paid $1.2 billion for it. Their asking price, according to Reuters, is not even close. In the area of “hundreds of millions”.

If it’s true, it would reflect a serious change of heart in HP management. Which, you know, makes sense, since HP changed the rest of their management, too. Still, it takes a lot to eat the cost of an acquisition to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Either HP’s new CEO has some serious disagreements with its old CEO, or HP as a whole regrets ever picking up the thing. After they canned the entire ecosystem, we can’t say we’re entirely thrilled they did either.

Speculation will henceforth run rampant as to who’s buying, but since HP hasn’t outright announced the sale, we don’t imagine we’ll hear much for certain on that front for a while. Reuters, however, claims that among the potential suitors are Amazon, RIM, IBM, Intel, and Oracle. Amazon and RIM are, of course, both pretending to compete with iOS and Android, so they’re natural fits. Oracle, on the other hand, is engaged in a lengthy patent dispute with Google over Android, despite once being on very good terms with the company. An acquisition of WebOS may be very good for Oracle’s patent portfolio, but very bad for the platform as a whole. A sale to Oracle for use as ammo against Android would be a most amusing turn, since HP called out Oracle for anti-competitive behavior during the very conference call they used to announce the death of WebOS devices.

Also IBM and Intel might buy it because…..why not.


Source: The Verge

Scroll to Top