HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion

Before you read this post check out Palm’s video

Palm webOS lets you use multiple applications at the same time and see all your information at a glance thanks to its intuitive user interface. [ source: Facebook / Palm ]
On April 28, 2010, HP announce it’s acquisition of Palm for $1.2 Billion in it’s press release, while Palm announced in their blog. HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. As for the Palm’s current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company.
According to Todd Bradley, HP EVP, Personal Systems Group, in acquiring Palm, HP dramatically accelerates the assets needed to deliver compelling mobile experiences. Palm’s world class technology, coupled with HP’s scale and financial strength will accelerate HP strategy within the connected mobile device market.
He also pointed out that smartphone market alone is > $100 billion and growing over 20%. HP see the further opportunity beyond smartphone into additional connected mobile form factors. They anticipated that with the WebOS they will be able to aggressively deploy an integrated platform that will allow HP to own the entire customer experience for their customers. With Palm HP acquires a strong OS to deliver unique customer experience in applications to over 2000 apps and growing, a platform to deliver mobile cloud-based services, and an opportunity to drive preference in the market among customers.

Compelling Combinations

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Combination of HP & Palm bring unique assets and advantages that HP expect to contribute to a winning combination.
Palm has developed a world class mobile operating system and platform. The integrated user interface they have architected and implemented delivers an incredible experience from true multitasking on the device to a rich and growing set of applications. Behind this technology is a valuable IP portfolio including cloud-based assets which will advantage HP. And behind that IP is a deep bench of engineering talent led by a strong and experienced management team.
Palm brings all of this to HP, the right operating environment, a valuable IP portfolio, and the people who know how to drive innovation that matters to customers. HP brings to the table both the financial strength and the commitment to further invest to accelerate profitable growth in the connected mobile device market. HP are willing to invest heavily in product development and go to market to drive this business aggressively.
HP has built a unique strength thru its scale and global reach. 1 out of 5 PC’s shipped to over 170 countries worldwide comes from HP. At this scale, HP provides a foundation of flexibility, cost efficiency and reach, to the industry. With Palm, HP expects to leverage it’s scale and global reach to extend WebOS experience to more customers in more countries and across more products than Palm could do on it’s own.

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You can see WebOS is build on a true mobile platform. With WebOS as its core, it enables significant scalability, ease of application development, and portability to multiple devices. The environment performs the way you would want and expect a personal connected device to operate with application multitasking, integrated personal information, and Web services and an intuitive gesture interface. With > 2000 applications and growing, this platform and Palm developer program are gaining momentum. With HP, given the financial commitment, they intend to make to this operating environment, they expect this pace to accelerate.
Furthermore, this platform enables cloud-based services such as over the air updates, online backup and messaging services.

Critical Acclaim for Web PalmOS

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In Conclusion
Acquisition of Palm as …

• Strategic and financially attractive opportunity
• A powerful combination together with HP and Palm
• Palm provide HP with the opportunity to move forward with world class technology and an integrated customer experience.

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Palm senior team bios with photo
April 28 (Bloomberg) — David Garrity, principal at GVA Research LLC, talks with Bloomberg’s Carol Massar and Matt Miller about Hewlett-Packard Co.’s agreement to acquire Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion, stepping up efforts to compete in the smartphone market. Bloomberg’s Dominick Chu and Adam Johnson also speak. (Source: Bloomberg)

Updates: Letter from Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein sent to employees which was obtained by the Wall Street Journal
Summary from source HP