HP Repeats Palm History

[andysocial]

Way back in 2002, Palm was the #1 PDA and smartphone OS in the USA. They decided to split their company into a hardware and a software company, and then licensed their own OS from themselves in 2003. It’s all very weird and confusing, and would seem to serve well as a warning to future generations of geeks how not to run a company.

Now that HP has fully digested their Palm acquisition, they are repeating this move. They intend to spin off their personal systems group into a separate company (or just sell it, depending on the rumor). Meanwhile, they are holding onto WebOS (what might be considered PalmOS V7), perhaps intending to license it to their spunoff hardware division at a later date. That worked so well ten years ago, why not?

Originally published at BunkBlog. You can comment here or there.