HP to take over Palm, begin the price wars

Once pioneered in the Personal Digital Assistant(PDA) and later with failed smart phone share Palm now become part of HP. Palm may get a new relief  with an overnight buyout by HP, which was once Palm’s biggest competitor.  HP already lagging behind its rivals Dell, HTC and Lenovo in the smart phone market. With the palm acquisition HP now get a breath to compete with its rivals in the ever fascinating money making domain.

For the last few months Palm has been struggling to boost sales of its new range of smartphones, running out of options but to be part of the giant HP. The deal costed HP at US$1.2 billion. HP already announced Palm’s WebOS through a new range of HP-branded smartphones.
HP and Palm were once fierce competitors in the PDA space, with HP’s iPaq lined up as the champion of Microsoft’s Windows-powered Pocket PC devices against the nimble PalmOS.

But Palm proved more successful in the transition from PDAs to smartphones whereas HP’s iPaq devices are all but dead, with the company still offering a few iPaq phones to selected markets.

Now it’s up to HP to show what they can do with Palm’s highly-regarded WebOS, if the company can turn around its fortunes in the smartphone space.

HP has a strong foot hold in US and Asia. Asia is home to the world’s No.2 and No.3 mobile phone makers in South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, but their presence in the fast-growing and lucrative smart phone market has been marginal. HP -Palm deal will be a fresh blow to Asian smart phone makers. This deal will be benifited by the end user as the deal invite a new price wars.