Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Amazon may acquire remnants of Palm and webOS from HP

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 7:30PM EST
BGR

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Amazon is reportedly a front runner among multiple companies currently in talks with Hewlett-Packard to purchase its struggling webOS business. VentureBeat cites an anonymous “well-placed source” in reporting the HP is looking to dump what’s left of Palm and webOS as quickly as possible, and Amazon is nearing a deal to make the acquisition. Read on for more.

Amazon unveiled its first full-scale tablet earlier this week, the Kindle Fire, which runs a highly customized version of Google’s Android operating system. The company put a great deal of R&D and other resources behind customizing the free, open-source Android OS, and it would appear that Amazon plans to update and maintain the platform independent of Google. As such, it is unclear exactly how purchasing webOS from HP would benefit Amazon.

With one tablet nearing release and a second tablet being prepped for an early 2012 launch, webOS would cost Amazon a small fortune and essentially force the company to go back to the drawing board in terms of building hardware around an entirely new platform. Neither HP nor Amazon would comment on the report.

Read

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.