The most interesting part of the original article was how close RIM came to buying them. RIM's original bid was substantially higher than the bid HP won with, but revised their bid to just below HPs bid and lost.

RIM has done very well as a company main led by engineers with nowhere near the vision that Apple has. Had they won and had an infusion of palm (and so a bit of Apple) they could have become a serious threat to Apple in the consumer space.

It might have made sense for Apple to buy Palm... they could have used Palm as a way to compete against Google on Verizon's network, while always making sure that Palm was just a little behind the iPhone. Plus there's all the IP. Oh well, maybe Apple has better ideas for how to spend their cash.

Interesting.. Can you imagine combining webOS tech with iOS? This would've put Apple on multiple U.S. carriers too..

I'm glad that Apple lost the bidding. It means that there is a chance that HP will create something wonderful. I've read that HP usually screws up acquisitions and products from other companies. I hope this time they let the WebOS guys create something then just build it without screwing it up.

Competition is a good thing, especially when the other company is capable of funding research into new things without worrying too much about funding.

Apple's interest was definitely in the intellectual property. I think they're scared that Palm held the rights to some of the features of iOS. Imagine what would happen to Apple if some judge granted an injunction on sales of all iOS devices.

Let me guess: Palm had a patent on how to hold a mobile phone in the palm of your hands without a problem?

What this article tells me is that much like in the bidding war against Google for AdMob, Apple is willing to open their pocketbooks if they feel if it's in their best interests, but they are not willing to overpay for anyone despite their huge war chest. That's important for shareholders. I'm sure that they weighed the pros and cons of paying patent fees over a number of years versus the benefits of owning the IP outright over a number of years. It seems unlikely that Apple would have continued WebOS in any form outside of continuing support of existing users. Despite RIMs dominance in the hard-keyboard market, few people complain that the iPhone doesn't have a keyboard anymore, especially in the era of Android where the majority of those new phones are all touchscreen only interfaces.

For the other bidders, they had their own objectives for acquiring Palm. RIM wanted the IP but they need the overall tech of the Palm OS far more than Apple does. I'm sure that Apple feels hiring HP's engineer responsible for WebOS' notification engine was a far cheaper play than paying too much for Palm.

Google, like Apple, just wanted the IP since they thought Apple was going might be playing for it (much like the AdMob acquisition). But I suspect they realized that Wall Street thinks they paid too much for AdMob (especially since Apple had a second choice M&A target) so they would not make the same mistake again.

That leaves HP which actually wanted to use WebOS for other things in their product strategy. A lightweight version of WebOS in devices like printers would be a far better interface than what's in HP's current products. And it gave them a platform for tablets and phones they didn't have otherwise which means they wouldn't have to depend on Microsoft or Google for OSes. The IP ownership was a bonus. In the end, that was worth $1.2 billion for HP.