H-P (HPQ) Said to Mull Sale of webOS, Suitors Swarm
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Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) is still struggling to streamline it operations following the CEO change in September.
Despite efforts by former CEO Leo Apotheker to divest the unit, Hewlett-Packard decided at the end of October it was going to keep it's PC division. Also around this time, Hewlett-Packard completed a proposed acquisition of Autonomy for about $11.7 billion.
Now Hewlett-Packard might be looking to sell Palm's webOS mobile platform, according to reports from Reuters Tuesday. Though Hewlett-Packard paid about $1.2 billion to acquire Palm and webOS, its likely the platform would sell for a smaller portion than the original price -- probably a few hundred million dollars.
Sources have indicated companies like Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) might be interested in the operating system.
The move comes as Hewlett-Packard recently slammed the door on it's TouchPad production, which utilized the webOS platform. Current CEO Meg Whitman said the company was looking for ways to "optimize" the webOS software.
It'd be curious as to why RIM would want webOS, with the only possible reason being to eliminate a competitor. RIM investors have been anticipating the launch of QNX-based devices for quite a while now, and realization is expected to occur sometime in early 2012.
Amazon might get the most from webOS. Amazon's Kindle devices and new Kindle Fire media tablet run on Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android OS platform... similar to what many other competitors are using. Buying webOS would let Amazon be able to diversify away from Android, and provide a more unique offering.
Hewlett-Packard shares are down about 1 percent Tuesday afternoon.
Despite efforts by former CEO Leo Apotheker to divest the unit, Hewlett-Packard decided at the end of October it was going to keep it's PC division. Also around this time, Hewlett-Packard completed a proposed acquisition of Autonomy for about $11.7 billion.
Now Hewlett-Packard might be looking to sell Palm's webOS mobile platform, according to reports from Reuters Tuesday. Though Hewlett-Packard paid about $1.2 billion to acquire Palm and webOS, its likely the platform would sell for a smaller portion than the original price -- probably a few hundred million dollars.
Sources have indicated companies like Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) might be interested in the operating system.
The move comes as Hewlett-Packard recently slammed the door on it's TouchPad production, which utilized the webOS platform. Current CEO Meg Whitman said the company was looking for ways to "optimize" the webOS software.
It'd be curious as to why RIM would want webOS, with the only possible reason being to eliminate a competitor. RIM investors have been anticipating the launch of QNX-based devices for quite a while now, and realization is expected to occur sometime in early 2012.
Amazon might get the most from webOS. Amazon's Kindle devices and new Kindle Fire media tablet run on Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android OS platform... similar to what many other competitors are using. Buying webOS would let Amazon be able to diversify away from Android, and provide a more unique offering.
Hewlett-Packard shares are down about 1 percent Tuesday afternoon.
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