HP Sells Palm Brand To Alcatel OneTouch
by Brandon Chester on December 31, 2014 3:04 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HP
- Palm
- Alcatel OneTouch
We haven't heard much from Palm since they were purchased by HP in 2010. The Palm Pre 2 was unsuccessful, the Pre 3 was cancelled, and after the failure of the HP Touchpad it seemed that the WebOS platform would be doomed to become some sort of software for HP printers. However, it looks like the Palm brand may come back. Writers at WebOS nation have discovered several pieces of evidences that indicate that the brand has been sold to Alcatel OneTouch, a company owned by the Chinese TCL Corporation which makes various consumer electronics,.
The first evidence of the sale was found when the Palm.com domain began redirecting to mynewpalm.com, with a video of the Palm logo and the phrases "Coming soon" and "Smart move" underneath. Smart move is the slogan for Alcatel OneTouch. Shortly afterward, a WebOS Nations forum member discovered a USPTO document which indicated that the Palm name, trademarks, and logos had been transferred from HP to a shelf company named Wide Progress Global Limited. The person who signed the paperwork for the transfer is a man named Nicolas Zibell, who also holds the position of "President Americas and Pacific" at Alcatel OneTouch. This, combined with the usage of the same slogan as Alcatel OneTouch, makes it very likely that the brand has indeed been sold by HP to Alcatel OneTouch. Anyone interested should definitely check out the detective work by the writers and users at WebOS Nation in the source below, and in the link above to the forum user's blog where he detailed his original findings.
Source: WebOS Nation via Arstechnica
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petersterncan - Sunday, February 1, 2015 - link
Yep... they also ruined the Compaq brand and completed the destruction of DEC brand and related products... though the destruction if these brands started prior to Compaq being bought by HP.Prior to buying Compaq, HP wasn't too bad. When HP bought Compaq, it also gained Compaq's poor-management illness.
jabber - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
I don't know why companies feel they have to branch into everything. Why not just be the best at one thing and enjoy that reputation? Instead they have to get into all sorts of different markets that they previously had little experience with and they end up masters of none and mediocre. Seen it with so many companies, the brands that endure are the ones that are the best at what they do in a small field.telurian - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Because as a company you can't predict the future and the thing you do best can become irrelevant over night. If you're not trying new stuff you risk being caught pants down. Corporations are not really good at pivoting quickly when something disturbs the market so there needs to be diversity, new verticals built that ideally support the core business.Solandri - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Ah yes, the Kodak formula. Become the best at one thing and live off your mastery of that. Until some new technology comes about that makes your cash cow obsolete.HP is doing the right thing by trying to diversify. The problem is their management has somehow got in their heads that "diversify" means buy something and try to hammer out all the parts which stick out until it fits into your existing corporate structure.
The old HP was the opposite - let their researchers and engineers do crazy stuff to come up with the occasional great idea. e.g. The inkjet printer was invented when some guys were playing around in the lab with moving tiny bubbles of liquid with static electricity.
az060693 - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Bought an hp envy 14 back in 2011. At the time, most of my friends either bought HP, Dell, or Apple laptops. Fast forward to now and that laptop is near unusable because the TIM they used dried up a year and a half ago. All my friends' dell and apple laptops are still humming along nicely. My situation isn't unique either; many other people I've talked to who bought HP laptops along that time period have the same issue.az060693 - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
*aroundyelped - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Crazy, how cheap companies are. Saving a few cents to cost you hundreds of bucks, and inconveniencing you, and contributing to global warming, due to having to throw out the whole laptop. :)ArcticFury - Friday, January 2, 2015 - link
In the short term, using a cheaper part that saves say $1.00 per unit. Multiply that by a million units and that is a $1M extra revenue. However, in the long term, the lower quality can alienate your consumer and drive them to a competitor who has superior durability. We actually learned in engineering class that once upon a time things were engineered with the concept of lasting as long as possible (with things like high fatigue limit in mind). Now it is taught: just build things to last as long as warranty, and no more, with the expectation the consumer will have to buy another product within the designed life.In the end, it all boils down to companies like HP who are engineering things to work *just* long enough until the product is out of warranty. It is all very short term profit driven, and in the long run will cause major problems in their revenue streams, assuming there is a competitor in their market with a superior product. Nonetheless, it is all quite frustrating for the consumer though.
Pessimism - Friday, January 2, 2015 - link
Considering that few if any people under the age of 30 even remember what a PalmPilot was, I have to question anyone who thought there was value in buying this brand name...That said, RIP Palm. In their time they were great little devices and I owned a couple myself.
TelstarTOS - Friday, January 2, 2015 - link
Palm was already dead.