There's a rise in the number of manufacturers ready to take a stance against the Apple iPad. The business arena is one area of interest some, such as Cisco, are hoping to get a leg up on the current standard of tablets, with several other device makers not too far behind. This means that the business sector is going to be getting a lot of gadgets thrown its way in the near future, and Apple will need to stay on its toes to ward off competition. The development of the tablet industry, while thankful to Apple, is also looking to beat the company at its own game. As Apple grows its focus beyond entertainment, the enterprise and SMB sectors are important areas to target for broadened distribution. So far, Apple is taking measures to encr

Today, HP today announced it has completed its acquisition of Palm Inc. at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash. Back in March SiliconAngle was the first to accurately report that HP would be buying Palm. We have been covering this story from that point forward.  HP then went out and did the deal which caught the industry by surprise.   Given the marketplace velocity and Palm's history of speed and lack of marketing, There was no doubt in my mind that Palm would be sold. I don't think that they could have recovered, and it was widely known that they were on the block to be sold. In the new Palm under HP the former Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubenstein will report to Todd Bradley who is the executive vice

I have been a tremendous fan of what the engineering team(s) at Palm have been up to since the moment I heard that Palm's next generation of handsets would run on a new operating system that was based entirely on open web standards.  Having been a web developer since 1995 and a mobile web developer since 2000 I knew it would immediately be a game changer when it was released. I have been tracking the project very closely since day one and have been blessed with the opportunity to be around all major events with visits to CES last year for the unveiling,  the Pre Experience in LA, CES 2010, GDC this year, and Palm's own developer conference just a week before the HP acquisition announcement. The acquisition was not a big surpris

I’ve been pondering the meaning of the recent rash of cancellations of upcoming padlike devices, trying to put them in context with one another.  The easy conclusion to try to reach for is that they’re all somehow running scared from the iPad, but even the most loyal adherant of the Church of Apple would recognize the fallacy of that argument.  When something is at the height of a hype cycle, you try to capitalize on the hype, not run the other direction. When the iPod was first announced, it created a full cottage industry for knock-off iPods and a well formed ecosystem around the manufacture of MP3 and portable media players. When the iPhone was announced, it helped kick off the world of smartphones in a way that Nokia had

Enough has been written about HP acquiring Palm that I don’t think it’s that newsworthy today… however something has been bouncing around my hamster cage since reading the coverage yesterday that I’m not ready to let it go. Maybe this isn’t about smart phones at all? Put another way, of course this is about smart phones but maybe the value of Palm to HP goes way beyond smart phones. Arguably the two assets that Palm has which are worth something are the credibility of the Palm brand and the critically acclaimed (by geeks that is) WebOS. As Apple and Google have proved with the iPhone OS and Android respectively, there is nothing about these platform operating systems that requires a voice communication capability be attached to

HP just released information that they’ve “entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm.” The pricetag is $5.70 a share, putting the total cost at around $1.2 billion. “We’re thrilled by HP’s vote of confidence in Palm’s technological leadership, which delivered Palm webOS and iconic products such as the Palm Pre. HP’s longstanding culture of innovation, scale and global operating resources make it the perfect partner to rapidly accelerate the growth of webOS,” said Jon Rubinstein, chairman and chief executive officer, Palm. “We look forward to working with HP to continue to deliver industry-leading mobile experiences to our customers and business partners.” Obviously, though, this plays

Bloomberg is reporting that Palm is working with Goldman Sachs and Frank Quattrone's Qatalyst Partners to find a buyer.  I hope that the news is just more rumors, or that any truth to it is just Palm prepping for managing the inquiries that have been flooding in. SiliconAngle's John Furrier wrote a post on Palm right at the end of their last earnings call predicting the sale of Palm. There has been no shortage of speculation (which SiliconAngle was first to predict) and talk about a Palm acquisition starting last year after the release of the Pre.  Buyout talk heated up big time a few weeks ago after Q3 earnings disappointed ranging from Lenovo, to Dell, and more recently to HTC. Some quick thoughts on rumored suitors that see

Remember Palm? I do.  Some of my first mobile smart phone experiences as an independent developer and as a user were on the Palm platform. Look around, though, and you’ll barely see any Palm devices, and the carriers are having trouble giving the devices away.  A friend of mine has a conference coming up this summer, and she wants to give away smartphones at the door to all conference goers. She wants to use Android phones, but the carrier sponsoring the give-a-way is trying to push onto her Palm Pre’s. Of course, she says “Nothin’ doin’” to that. It’s puzzling, since the device is a decent piece of kit, all things considered.  After reading an interview with Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein, I get the sense he’s

With the Game Developers Conference happening last week in San Francisco and Microsoft hosting their Mix conference in Vegas this week, gaming on smart phones has been a hot topic of late.  As it now stands from a platform perspective for all the modern platforms that developers can choose from today Android is currently bringing up rear when it comes to professional/indie game titles.  I will leave the iPhone out of this argument since it rules the smartphone world, everyone already pre-ordered their iPad. Last week Palm publically their new PDK framework for webOS at GDC to much applause and interest from the development community.  For having what the public deems as insignificant market share in the smart phone sector P

Google Phone now confirmed to exist; Internet explodes While details are still sketchy at best, it has been confirmed that Google has handed out some sort of phone to its employees. Rumors are flying faster than you can say "Android" that this is the long rumored gPhone (sorry, TechCrunch, but fellow Angler Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins talked about this phone well before you did), and everything is pointing to it finally being the phone we thought it was.  One minor change is that it won't be called the gPhone, but instead it will be called "Nexus One". Listen For More gPhone Coverage (or download the MP3) [Editor’s Note: Sean and I were joined by Inquisitr’s Steven Hodson on a special our and a half long editi