HP is purchasing Palm.
http://technologizer.com/2010/04/28/hp-buys-palm/
Apple wants ARM
There has been rumours for a while of suitors wanting to get their hands on Palm, including HTC. HTC evidently backed away from it and HP has won out.
Palm took over from the Apple Newton in being a mobile personal organiser with some mobile phone network connectivity and PIM synchronisation but have lost market share to other phone companies. http://www.palm.com/au/
HP were big with Windows PDAs in the days before Windows Phones with the Compaq iPaq.. http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/au/en/sm/WF05a/215348-215348-64929-215384-215384-3544250.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_AUEN Actually Compaq were big with it until HP took them over/merged(??) and then it was sidelined. I have had a few of these, they were how I started in Windows CE. .. I also had a HP Jornada 820, a great device for its time and a forerunner to Netbook concept in terms of functionality by about 6 years .. but it got killed. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/0038/index.html
Lets hope that that there is a a bit of Gestalt with this combination: The combination is greater than the sum of the parts. ???
Apple is rumoured to be keen to take over ARM, the source of IP for a majority of CPUs as used in mobile devices.
Understand though that ARM don’t manufacture CPUs/microprocessors. They develop the IP for those processors in terms of registry structure, IO, machine code etc. CPU manufacturers then license this IP and bolt on extra functionality to build the silicon.
Evidently Apple are ARM’s biggest customer.
The challenge is that most (or at least a good majority) of mobile phones use an ARM CPU. Also a majority on non x88 Windows CE devices probably use ARM.
Given Apple’s fixation with patenting everything including the kitchen sink, this could be a challenge for other phone OEMs.