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Amazon In Talks With HP To Buy Palm
Nemilar writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat:
"Who will save what's left of Palm from HP's bumbling? It could be Amazon, as the online retailing giant is in serious negotiations to snap up Palm from HP. No other company seems as fitting a home for Palm and its webOS software. It's worth noting that former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, who now holds a vague 'product innovation' role at HP's Personal Services Group, joined Amazon's board late last year."
Seems pretty absurd to me. They just launched an Android-based platform with Amazon-customized UI, their apps already run on Android devices (of which there are quite a few out there), and they have their shiny new cloud-assisted browser, built on Android and EC2. What do they need WebOS for? How are they a "fitting home" for it?
What happened to my $5 offer?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I want Google to buy Palm's assets so that the WebOS benefits (like the card interface) can be merged into Android. They can junk the hardware and just keep the good stuff that was part of WebOS.
Try first fail.
Still a first though.
A good 20% of the staff in Amazon's Kindle division (Lab126) are ex-Palm. They can rejoin their old coworkers.
Except I am told that many of the people left Palm because they didn't like working with some people there. And some people from Palm were glad that some of these people left because they were real assholes.
the guy who wrote the article is an idiot.
amazon wants them for their patents, nothing else.
Possibly IP assets and hardware expertise?
Ok I read TFA and I'm not sure how this is going to work out.
Amazon has an Android tablet but so heavily disguised you supposedly can't tell it's Android, and there is apparently some kind of appeal in adopting WebOS which they could also heavily disguise to look similar, although it probably won't be compatible with Fire first edition apps. What TFA doesn't say is what this does to the Fire early adopters. Nothing good, I suspect.
I was interested in the Fire, especially at that price point, but am now going to hold off and see how this plays out, which I recognize is the Osborne Effect revisited, but as much as I like Palm, and as much as I was attracted to the Fire, as a responsible consumer I can't buy every damned thing that comes out and then re-buy it when the *real* product succeeds it. The advantage is that Amazon isn't betting the farm on the Fire, so they can probably handle reduced sales while they work out their strategic direction.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Consider that by buying WebOS they now have claim to the landslide of Touchpads that just sold AND all the positive marketing. Negotiate in a deal for upgrading the software for them, and you have one hell of an advertizing base...instantly. Not to mention owning all the patents as well.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Three thoughts.
#1 is obvious - patents. Perhaps they expect Apple to sue them trying to block sales, or MS to come collecting fees, and think that Palm has a patent portfolio that is a good deterrent in mobile tech (which wouldn't be surprising).
#2 is that Amazon sees patent problems with Android, especially the ones with Oracle, and thinks that there is a good chance that this will translate to considerable $$$ payouts for anyone who's building their systems on that (since, obviously, Oracle will sue all Android manufacturers for licensing fees if they win the fight with Google). And so they want a safe fallback platform, preferably one that is already stable and proven, yet not completely different (still Linux at heart).
#3 is that Android that runs on Kindle Fire is very different from your typical Android. To a casual user, it's pretty much unrecognizable. To that extent, one wonders if they could take webOS and slap an Android compat layer on top of that (given that it's also Linux-based, it's probably not all that hard to make Dalvik run there). Not sure what would possibly be gained by doing that, but from what I heard, webOS is better at smooth UI than Android.
I never thought I'd compare WebOS to the slut of the mobile OS world.
They really get around.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The only "good fit" about it is Amazon has stable and competent management.
you are the idiot. Amazon wants a tablet locked in to their content. webOS provides much better lock-in than a neutered vesion of Android that's sure to be hacked and forced open sooner or later. Amazon is probably the only player aside from Apple/Google/MS to be in a position to create and support an ecosystem.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Well they could always have later versions of the Kindle Fire based on WebOS, and I would wonder if they could even issue a new software update for the Fire that moved it over to Palm. Their applications, include their "shiny new browser", can probably be ported over.
Although their Fire is currently running Android, it doesn't seem like they're aiming aiming to create "just another Android tablet". They want it to be highly customized and focused on directing you to their own services rather than providing a completely open system that encourages you to pull content from wherever.
So given that they're not tied to a particular back-end and they're looking to completely customize the front end, it's probably a pretty good fit. At least, it's probably a better fit than anyone else who's likely to buy Palm.
I bet the corporate culture at Amazon is better than it is at Palm at the moment, so a merger might be liberating for the employees. This is also great for competition; Android might get some benefits, but I'm looking forward to see how they will leverage their mindshare with their tablet business. It's nice to see another big name giving Apple a run for their money.
I think Google would have bought them a good while ago if they really wanted them. In fact, I think that they probably considered them before buying out Motorola Mobility and decided on the latter because of their (much) stronger patent portfolio.
given that it's also Linux-based, it's probably not all that hard to make Dalvik run there
Maybe I'm misremembering, isn't Dalvik the part of Android that Oracle is suing over? I thought that was the whole reason that Palm didn't want to implement it, sure it would give them access to all the Android apps that are already made (and then we'd have to retrain everyone to think of them as Dalvik apps which Joe Public is never going to understand) but it would open them up to the same lawsuits Google is facing.
Take the money. Hopefully a lot but anything. Just take it. After a decade of bad mergers at least HP can shed itself of Palm. Maybe it will pay for the Meg Whitman exit package.
#1. Weren't most of the Palm patents sold out already? Of course whichever is left could be "enough" but still...
#2. "Visible" problems are always better than new ones. Unless Oracle actually closely examined Palm/HP's stuff you can't say if there will be lawsuits later, so blindly buying new operating system might be actually worse than letting Oracle and Google hash it out in court.
#3. So what? Look at HTC -- the older versions of Android skinned with HTC's Sense were almost unrecognizable from the stock Android. Same is for Nook, for example -- android inside, pretty skin hiding "unnecessary functions" on the outside. In this case Amazon would have to port all of their stuff onto webOS. On top of shelling out some money for the purchase and having developers work on the further development of OS.
While I suppose Amazon can pull in enough developers that weren't even looking at Web OS for now, there's still going to be a ramp-up time for "open" part of the system (third party apps). And I don't know how long it will take for major software houses to migrate enough of their developers onto WebOS if they haven't done it up to this point.
So I have to wonder if there's some other reason for this presumed purchase (perhaps to prevent Chinese manufactures from getting "their own" os so freshly bought asset will simply be mothballed?). Or the whole information is just wrong and Venture Beat is simply being used to pump up the price -- you know, "well, we'd sell to you for $$ but there's Amazon that's soooo interested, would you like to increase your bid amount now?"
Hyperom.com
yes lets throw millions of dollars to recreate the wheel cuz web os fanboys are our target market. idiot.
I really hope not. I like WebOS and would've gladly taken it instead of Android but there is such a thing as too many choices. As a developer having to deploy to both iOS and Android is already a pain.. as a consumer if I see someone with an iPhone with an app it may or may not exist/run on Android or WebOS. It sucks for pretty much everyone involved other than the large corporations backing these systems.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
FUD FUD an FUD. Fire can be rooted making it a damn cheap slab.
It's not just Oracle. Android-based vendors are lining up to pay Microsoft as much as $10 a unit as well.
And, by the way, since Amazon isn't paying Google, it's possible Oracle will go after Amazon as well.
and how are the current apps in the amazon market going to work?
If there's a nearly-baked Amazon app for WebOS and they like it, that would go a long way to speeding introduction of webos-branded stuff by amazon.
Does anyone know any details?
the guy who wrote the article is an idiot.
you are the idiot.
yes lets throw millions of dollars to recreate the wheel cuz web os fanboys are our target market. idiot.
NERD RAGE, NERD FIGHT!!!! Somebody call Jerry Springer. Move out midgets and hookers, nerds are in da house!
Kind of like how they work right now. Running on someone else's device.
One word: emulation!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Yes, so it's either #2 or #3, not #2 AND #3.
Given that there's more than a month to the release date of Fire, how do you know that it can be rooted, and e.g. does not have a locked bootloader?
And even if it can, what difference does it makes for any of my points? Do you seriously think that Amazon considers the "I'll buy it, root it and slap CM on it" folk their primary target audience?
Well, Microsoft so far is content with just collecting a fairly modest (comparable to what you pay for other commercial mobile OSes) licensing fee - this cuts into the profit margin of Android vendors, but I doubt it's significant; they can still keep selling the product and making money. Oracle, on the other hand, seems to be bent on either getting a huge payout for Java, or (recently) even forcing Google to drop Dalvik altogether because it's not "standard Java". The latter, in particular, would really hurt Android as a platform.
You'll have to deal with Win8 once it comes out anyway, and it, like webOS, also promotes HTML5/JS as the app framework. Come to think of it, it would be quite ironic if Win8 would revive webOS app market...
This makes perfect sense to me. With Android, Amazon doesn't have top-to-bottom vertical integration and control, since they still rely on Google to do the core Android development and thus need to either be beholden to Google's timing or continue to work with forks of older versions. If they buy WebOS, they now employ all the programmers and can coordinate all the pieces that go into their tablet. Then could also further develop their EC2-assistance technologies and extend them beyond Silk to further enhance tablet performance. Buy making their forward-facing UI software completely custom, it's independent of Android from the customer point of view, especially customers buying the device for media and not for Android app compatibiility. This should make it easier to transplant the UI onto a different core OS without confusing customers who've already learned the UI. They could eventually exposure more of WebOS over time and offer a fully-controlled app store for it. I even wonder if they'd create a special build for $99 TouchPad firesale customers, allowing them to transform their tablets into large-screen Kindle Fires. In effect, HP would have subsidized putting Kindle software into many more Amazon-media-consuming hands.
What's left of Palm? There was something _left_ of Palm? I thought they were bought out and gutted and what was left of their assets absorbed by a company that had no interest in maintaining their product line a long time ago (well, a long time ago in internet time -- months and months and months).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Microsoft is hijacking the HTML5/JS terminology for Windows 8 similar to how they hijacked the Java language on the windows platform. The support for HTML5/JavaScript is really to use their proprietary WinRT framework. So Win8 apps will not work on webOS.
"Microsoft and Amazon signed a licensing agreement in February last year that covers technology used in the Kindle and various other products. That agreement does not cover Amazon’s new Android-powered Kindle Fire tablet, BGR has learned, which means Amazon could be coughing up hefty licensing fees to Microsoft in the near future" link
I was hoping that HP would open source WebOS, but I don't think there's much chance of that happening if Amazon takes it over. Too bad. Of course, I can't really fault HP for trying to make money from Palm / WebOS if they can.
Microsoft is hijacking the HTML5/JS terminology for Windows 8 similar to how they hijacked the Java language on the windows platform. The support for HTML5/JavaScript is really to use their proprietary WinRT framework. So Win8 apps will not work on webOS.
There's no hijacking there, quite the opposite - a lot of things in WinRT are deliberately made inaccessible specifically to JS apps in those cases where a portable HTML5 solution exists instead (XAML UI being a prominent example, but there are many others). WinRT is there so that OS-specific features are exposed for those apps which want or need them - such as context menus ("charms"), or registering the app as a handler for a certain file type, or app lifecycle management; or for things that could be portable but aren't covered by HTML5 specs today (e.g. camera API).
This, by the way, is not any different from how HTML5 apps work on webOS, which also has its own proprietary API extending HTML5/JS core. This is inevitable, because the existing specs are simply not rich enough to cover all scenarios that are needed for a full-featured app that runs outside the browser.
So an existing webOS app will likely not run on Win8, and an app written specifically for Win8 will likely not run on webOS. However, because UI is HTML5/CSS in both cases, and because many APIs are standardized and thus shared, it's much easier to port. Furthermore, when someone starts writing a new app with portability in mind, it's fairly easy to account for OS differences, and to have a single HTML/CSS/JS codebase that uses portable APIs for its core functionality, and OS-specific APIs for deep integration on every targeted platform.
Heck, for some kinds of apps - e.g. if it's a 2D game, where you can just use Canvas - you might get away without having to use any platform-specific APIs at all.
Let's not forget that Palm had a lot of good experience developing simple UIs for use on portable devices and they had some good design ideas for not wasting battery life in applications, either. Some of the PDA functionality that Palm was so good at wouldn't be bad to have on a Kindle, really.
As a proud owner of a new HP tablet I am delighted at the prospect of this.WebOS almost get's it right and maybe with Amazons help something good will come out of it.
you are the idiot. Amazon wants a tablet locked in to their content. webOS provides much better lock-in than a neutered vesion of Android that's sure to be hacked and forced open sooner or later. Amazon is probably the only player aside from Apple/Google/MS to be in a position to create and support an ecosystem.
What do you mean "locked in"? Amazon was the first major DRM-free digital music store, and all the stuff in the "Cloud Player" is easily downloadable. While I haven't looked at their streaming video service, I don't doubt that there's some kind of DRM there, but I don't think the content owners would let them provide such a service without it. Of all the major players in the digital content market space, Amazon seems to be the best about staying away from lock-in. They do try to provide a big "all-in-one" shopping experience, but they're pretty good about letting you walk away if you choose.
HP just sacked all of the WebOS hardware people. They can't sell that expertise. That was a really dumb decision. If they wanted to get rid of WebOS, they should have kept them onboard and sold the hardware and software division together (or fired the hardware guys after they sold the software team if no one wanted them). If they really wanted to be like IBM though, they should have kept both and sold their services to other companies. When Amazon wants a new Kindle and B&N wants a new Nook, HP should be approaching them with offers to design the whole thing, hardware and software.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Uh, you have heard of the Kindle haven't you! you might also want to check into Amazons Proprietary eBook format that can only be read by Kindle or kindle apps! So yes they are looking for a "lock-in" just like Apple does with iPad and their ilk! They have an opportunity to out Apple Apple, since they can get away with a less feature rich device selling at a loss!
"Alien Dalvik" made by Myriad, which was demoed running an Android app on Maemo on the N900 back in February (although Myriad are not interested in selling it to the average consumer), since Pre games can be made to run on the N900 fairly easy, it is a pretty good bet it can be made to work on WebOS easily.
Or "ACL" by OpenMobile which seems to be much the same as Alien Dalvik in allowing Android apps to run on non-Android OSes, I believe they released a video of it running on Meego.