
HP On Palm Acquisition: “Our Intent Is To Double Down On WebOS” - nlwhittemore
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/hp-palm-deal-webos/
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jarin
WebOS is actually pretty nice to develop for, it just needs faster hardware
with better battery life. Oh, and a way for developers to make money. It's a
little rough that anyone can just shell into their phone and view all of your
source code.

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glhaynes
Is Palm's hardware roughly comparable with average Android and Apple phones?
(thus making it the software that's slow and power-hungry, not the hardware?)
I've just heard so many people complain that the "everything is web" aspect of
it makes it slow, but I don't know whether that's just a scapegoat or if it's
really true.

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sueders100
The Pre isn't as fast as the top of the line Android phones, but it's no
slouch either. It holds its own in most side by side comparisons.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7FJj5-7vQI>

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slantyyz
Maybe we'll finally see a legitimate competitor for the iPad now. All of a
sudden, the market just got a little interesting.

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gfodor
Good for them! WebOS, as I understand it, is the nicest OS of the bunch from
an elegance and openness perspective, so it's good to see it getting a fair
shot at market dominance.

Exciting stuff -- let's just hope the additional fragmentation is worth it.

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postfuturist
The fragmentation is good. The phone market is much healthier than the PC
market. A handful of profitable platforms means heavy competition and
innovation: a big win for consumers (and developers). I hope HP does well in
the phone market, as I wish the peddlers of Android phones and Apple success
as well. Plenty of money to spread around in that market.

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zmmmmm
Too much fragmentation sucks. It means none of them will gain critical mass
and at least half of them will spend several painful years slowly failing. I
don't see how any of these guys (Symbian, WebOS, etc.) hope to overcome
Android & WinPhone, at least in the smart phone market. All they can do is
harm them by distracting and confusing the market for a few years, equating to
consolidation for Apple. I know I am certainly not going to write apps for 5
platforms. I will pick 2 and go with that.

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DrSprout
The majority of them are Linux-based, and all of them make heavy use of the
same web technologies for the primary part of the user experience. The
exception is WinMo, but I can't believe that they're going to last long at all
with IE7 as their browser of choice. They're going to need to either light a
fire under the IE9 team and somehow get feature parity with mobile Webkit, or
just throw in the towel and allow one of the other browsers on WinMo.

And as for the suggestion that Apple is going to take over... RIM still has
the largest market share in the US. Apple is a niche player, and they always
will be because of the premium they charge on their hardware (now further
compounded by the restrictions imposed on their hardware.)

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omaranto
I've never had a phone with Windows Mobile, but I use to have a PDA woth that
OS and I could run both Minimo (Gecko based) and Opera on it.

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DrSprout
With WinMo 7 all apps must be coded in Silverlight, and there is no native
development. This might be okay if they weren't using IE7 as the basis for the
WinMo 7 browser.

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jpcx01
I love my Pre. Great new innovative ui, and excellent browsing experience.

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37prime
The first thing came to my mind reading the headline was:

"What does KFC have anything to do with HP or Palm?"

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run4yourlives
Is using a gambling term to describe a business acquisition supposed to calm
shareholder fears/concerns of risk?

Clearly that one didn't go through the normal PR approval process.

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stretchwithme
maybe they think embracing the obvious is the way to go

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run4yourlives
You double down when you expect the odds favour a dealer bust.

I'm not sure how anyone suggesting that Apple, Google and RIM busting
shouldn't be feared, if that's what they actually mean.

