“When Hewlett-Packard coughed up $1.2 billion for Palm last spring, the acquisition was widely viewed as a quick way for the company to capture a slice of the increasingly important mobile device market,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD.
“And while the launch of the Veer and the Touchpad proved that true, there was another reason as well: Palm’s intellectual property,” Paczkowski reports. “As former HP CEO Mark Hurd explained a few months after the acquisition: ‘We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business… we bought it for the IP.'”
Paczkowski reports, “Current HP CEO Léo Apotheker said Thursday the company is considering all its strategic options. But, given the current environment, selling off the Palm patent portfolio is surely at the top of the list… A Palm patent sale could be an easy way for HP to ‘extract value from webOS,’ as Apotheker said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Wonder how much Apple would pay for Palm’s patents? Maybe they could get it at firesale prices, thus putting downward pressure on the InterDigital patent selloff.
HP owes Apple for infringing on Apple patents with their WebOS devices…. they can settle up by handing over the Palm patents.
This article makes no sense. If Palm’s patents were that valuable, then Palm would have sold for more than the $1.2 billion HP bought it for. Selling the patents by themselves would not turn a profit, but rather mitigate the loss.
Hmmm there is a reson the new Apple data centers have HP Server Gear. I think this is a carefully thought out plan and HP is going to capatlize on a good relationship with Apple. This shake up is great for the industry
Even Apple can only buy so many HP servers for its data centers. That would certainly make Apple a significant customer — enough to cross-license some Palm patents, perhaps, in return for dropping the lawsuit (having already cancelled their mobile device efforts)? Perhaps…that might work out for both sides.
Can they turn a profit…? Absolutely – They’ll just need to stop copying and start designing.
And I agree, this shake up really is good for the industry.