HP Looking to Sell webOS Unit
Hewlett-Packard is looking to sell Palm’s webOS mobile software platform, a deal that could fetch hundreds of millions of dollars but less than the $1.2 billion that HP paid last year, four sources close to the matter said. Advised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HP is trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, viewed by many analysts and investors as an expensive foray into the smartphone market that has not paid off. Amazon.com Inc, Research In Motion, IBM, Oracle Corp and Intel Corp are considered to be among the companies likely to be interested in the asset, industry sources said.
The future of the unit, which HP acquired when it bought Palm in 2010, was in jeopardy after the company decided to kill its webOS-based TouchPad tablet following poor sales. An HP spokesman said “we are exploring ways to optimize the webOS software,” and declined to further comment. HP is still mulling the software’s future, including if it should build a new webOS-based tablet, HP’s new chief executive Meg Whitman said in a recent interview.
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