Last week Hewlett-Packard unloaded 1,400 patents on Qualcomm, the world’s largest maker of mobile chips, as part of CEO Meg Whitman’s ongoing effort to dump low value-assets and refocus on high-growth areas such as converged infrastructure, cloud services and Big Data. The initiative is coming along nicely, HP Vertica’s Chris Selland informed us in an exclusive interview on theCUBE last month.

“The communication that comes from the top and works throughout all the regions, all the product groups in this organization, has been tremendous,” the executive told SiliconANGLE founding CEO John Furrier. “And now we come up with joint solutions around HAVEn, around appliances, focusing on some vertical markets with what they’re trying to achieve with Big Data.”

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Qualcomm officials said that the massive patent cache includes technologies Hewlett-Packard obtained as part of the 2010 acquisition of smartphone maker Palm, which was shut down just over a year later by former chief exec Leo Apotheker. The firm’s Linux-based webOS operating system, considered ahead of its time, was picked up by South Korean consumer electronics giant LG in early 2013 and revived as a smart TV platform.

In addition to the Palm patents, Qualcomm’s newly gained treasure trove of intellectual property contains the remnants of Bitfone, a mobile device management firm HP bought in 2006. The company developed customer experience solutions for device manufacturers and wireless operators. Curiously, the transaction also includes patents pertaining to the iPaq, a pocket PC  introduced by Compaq all the way back in April 2000.

Despite Whitman’s push to scale back on consumer tech, HP is by no means out of the mobile race. The hardware titan reentered the market earlier this month with a pair of voice-enabled phablets for Indian consumers.