Wednesday, April 28, 2010

HP buys Palm. Mobile wars continue.

So the big tech news of the day is that HP (aka Hewlett-Packard, the
leading maker of PCs) has bought embattled smartphone vendor Palm. The
$1.2 billion deal is expected to close in July, and it ends another
chapter in the life of the company that popularized the PDA, defined
the smartphone and subsequently faded into near-irrelevance.

(Seriously, I've lost count of how many ownership changes,
restructurings and rebrandings Palm has gone through. This must be
some sort of record.)

It'll be a slice of poetic karma - or is it karmic poetry? - if HP
manages to turn Palm back into a competitive player in this
increasingly treacherous market sector. Mobile isn't for the weak of
stomach, but HP, looking for opportunities beyond its core businesses,
didn't have much choice. We won't be buying PCs forever, so any
desktop/laptop/server vendor that isn't pushing a mobile strategy is
asking for trouble. Good on HP for recognizing the need now.

We live in interesting times, don't we?

Your turn: What kinda cell/smartphone do you carry? Why did you choose
that particular one?

--
Sent from my mobile device

4 comments:

Mark said...

But, wait, what will deliver the content to all those portable devices if there are no servers?

Catherine said...

What sort of cell phone? The cheapest one I could find, it is now a bit of a dinosaur - all I wanted to be able to do was send a text to the kids to ask "when will you be home for dinner?" or call for roadside assistance if the car every broke down. I hardly use it. It will need replacing sometime, at which time apparently the least I can get will still have all sorts of bells and whistles that my current one doesn't - like a camera. I have a good camera and don't feel the need for my phone to be a camera as well. Nor do I want to browse the internet on a phone, because the screen is just too tiny for my ageing eyes.

MB said...

I hate to admit I'm still living in the dark ages with a cell phone that only makes and receives calls. It drives my friends crazy that I don't text. I'm thinking of upgrading after my current contract expires but I don't want to end up like those people I see dining together but everyone is on their PDAs and not interacting with each other.

kenju said...

I have a Motorola phone from Verizon; I chose it because it was purple.

I don't text and don't want to learn how.....lol