HP buys Palm!
Just in, Hewlett Packard has purchased ailing smart phone maker Palm Inc. for about $1 billion in cash. Palm has been up for sale recently. In fanboy circles, yours truly included, the hope was that Taiwanese manufacturer HTC would buy Palm, and do something spectacular with Palm’s webOS. So much for that dream.
HP was always considered a possible suitor for Palm. This could be a good move for the computer manufacturer, as Dell, their chief rival in the US has recently shown a strong line up of mobility hardware running both Android and Windows Phone 7. By purchasing Palm, HP would have a strong differentiation with the webOS software, which would get a new lease on life.
The companies announced Wednesday that the deal will see HP pay $5.70 for every Palm common share. Palm had closed trading Wednesday at $4.63 but traded as high as $18.09 in the past 52 weeks.
When debt is included, the deal values Palm at $1.2-billion.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of July. [from GnM]
