Friday, 30 September 2011

Although Amazon has just launched an Android based tablet, the company is also reported to be mulling a bid to buy the former Palm OS owned by Hewlett-Packard.

Citing a well placed source, Venturebeat reported that Amazon is the closest to finalizing a deal to buy the operating system, since renamed as webOS, although other companies are still in the bidding race.

HP recently announced that it would scrap its under performing webOS division and stop sales of its own tablets, although a price cut lead to a surge in interest in the devices, suggesting that a low-price webOS tablet could be viable. Amazon's ability to subsidise tablets through content sales could make that a viable option.

HP paid US$1.2 billion for Palm just last year, but is unlikely to recover more than a tiny fraction of that cost.

A swift sale by HP could however be good news for the webOS development team, many of whom currently face redundancy.