HP To Buy Palm For $1.2 Billion

HP has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Palm in a landmark deal that will rearrange the mobile landscape.

Palm has suffered in recent quarters from low sales of its smartphones. The company has been rumored to be for sale for some time, both due to poor revenue and stock market performance. The company’s Pre phone, while well received by the technology press, never resonated with the public.

Palm is originally famous for the invention of the modern handheld computer, the Palm Pilot. Anyone who has been around the technology scene for more than a few years remembers them fondly as the first digital organizers that were time savers, not time wasters.

At a purchase price of $1.2 billion, HP is paying $5.70 a share for Palm. Surprisingly, the beleaguered Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is “expected to stay with the company.” The sale has been approved by both boards, and is expected to be completed during the HP’s third quarter, which ends on July 31 of this year. The deal will move quickly, and Palm’s life as an independent company will shortly be over.

HP claims that the purchase of Palm will “accelerate HP’s growth within the more than $100 billion connected mobile device market.” Whether that is true or not we will know in the next year. After all, HP bought Compaq. Is this a repeat?