I can see how the OS might make a great fresh start for imbedded use, but 1.2B for that? Seems rather high. The press release makes it sound like HP wants to jump into the smartphone pool with a brand new bathing suit.

I'm always suspect of acquisitions of high (or somewhat high) profile companies and brands, for the new company to only piss away much of the value they just purchased. Seriously, half of Palm's worth is in its brand. I know that's not saying much these days...

IMO, HO should keep the Palm brand and focus on a single strong product based around it and WebOS. Basically HP's Palm to Apple's iPhone. Tossing the WebOS name is trivial, but losing the Palm brand is equivalent to flushing a lot of money. They'll have to spend so much more to build back any type of meaningful brand for that product segment. "iPAQ" is not it.

At least it frees them from MS and Google, giving them a leg up on companies like Dell (who is probably going to fail miserably in mobile).