As if the stock market wasn’t already in a crazed frenzy today, it has come out that silicon valley big shot Hewlett-Packard is acquiring Palm. The deal is estimated to be around a cool $1.2 billion in cash.
Is this good news or what? If so, who is it good for HP or Palm? I raise that question because I personally worked at HP for 12 years before being “caught up” in the Carly Fiorina spearheaded acquisition of Compaq years ago. That deal was absolutely brutal for the people and culture on both sides of that event. HP hasn’t been the same organization since and with the recent acquisition of EDS going through problems you can only imagine how this Palm inclusion into the HP-fold will play out.
True, Palm has had some incredibly disappointing announcements as of late to their shareholders and have been looking for someone to come to their rescue. I just wonder what the long-term affects of this will be on the product offerings (will the Pre remain or become an iPaq?)
Jon Rubenstein, Palm’s chairman and chief executive seems pretty happy with the move, in a released statement he said,
“…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.”
Click here to go to the HP press release on BusinessWire.
What do you think?
