HP bought Palm today, as you no doubt have heard, for more than $1 billion. What does it mean when a company among the most venerable in Silicon Valley but outside the consumer tech limelight of the day, acquires another company that created the handheld computing market and continues to innovate radically, but has fallen far out of public favor? HP is a company with extensive social software experience, so I’m excited to see what it can do with Palm’s widely admired WebOS mobile platform.
Below we’ve posted some of most interesting short ruminations on the news, from the first few moments after the announcement, from smart industry thought leaders. There are a lot of different reactions out there, what are your thoughts about these ones?
Tim Bray, who recently left Sun after the Oracle acquisition, joined Google and blasted Apple in a blog post calling the iPhone a “a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers.”
Dion Almaer, well known innovative web developer at Palm, is excited.
Joe Hewitt, the man who built the Facebook iPhone app, gives Palm’s mobile OS a thumbs up.
Hearst Digital Media’s Seamus Condron is not so sure.
That’s a great question, so we asked it of HP. Senior VP of Strategy Brian Humphries told us today that “the issue over the years has been Palm’s ability to prove financial viability and with HP in the picture those concerns go away. We’ll invest substantially in building a developer community. Further, you take this OS onto other platforms and you give people an opportunity to participate in an ecosystem play.”
Mobile developer Tim Sears sees a potential iPad competitor.
Blogger Mark Hopkins points out that HP is on an acquisition roll. Deals we’ve spotted over the last 12 months include: cluster file storage software vendor IBRIX, global consulting company EYP Mission Critical Facilities and network infrastructure manufacturer 3Com $2.7b.
Lon Seidman, startup founder, points to a missed opportunity by Microsoft. Many people agree. Business Insider says this is all about HP trying to “end its reliance on Microsoft Windows as the basis for its hardware gadgets.”
Was it a bad deal for the investors? Leading financial blogger Dan Primack does some quick evaluation of the impact for Elevation Partners, the VC firm that singer Bono is a part of that put hundreds of millions into Palm. Primack says the sky has not fallen.
Former Autodesk and Edelman PR exec Caroline Kawashima is unmoved. Tech media guru Sam Whitmore retweets.
Online comedy guy Justin Kownacki is appropriately meta.
Huffington Post’s Adam Clark Estes makes a good joke.
