HP not to carry on making Palm smartphones

It looks like we may not see many new Palm phones in the future I am afraid.

HP’s CEO Mark Hurd spoke yesterday at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Technology conference and what he had to say was not encouraging.

Hurd reportedly said that HP isn’t going to ‘spend billions of dollars trying to get into the smartphone business; that doesn’t in any way make any sense.’

To add insult to smartphone injury, Hurd continued ‘We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well.’

So what many of us thought would happen is going to happen. It looks like HP bought Palm purely for the WEB OS and that is what they will roll out within millions of HP products. Having the WEB OS on handhelds is not a bad thing as it is a great OS. It’s just a real shame that it doesn’t look like the OS will be implemented into many smartphones, if any.

Is this foolish of HP? I think so. With the right hardware and right OS we all know that it can be an extremely profitable business. Just look how far HTC has come on over the past few years.

Although not massive Palm fans both Matt and myself have both owned Palm devices in the past and we will be sorry to see the company disappear from the smartphone market.

Posted by: James