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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Samus - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link
It is unforgivable what HP and Apotheker did to Palm. May they burn in hell.jt122333221 - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link
And WebOS - both were great before they destroyed them.jameskatt - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link
This is what happens when you have idiots running a company.BMNify - Wednesday, December 31, 2014 - link
WebOS is already sold to LG, the only thing left was Palm brand and now even that is sold by HP for few millions.eanazag - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
HP has a history of ruining brands. Voodoo PC used to mean something. HP bought it and it is gone. It makes no sense because the Envy products are nothing close to Voodoo class products. HP's leadership is inept and foolish.I'd like to say their laser printers are good and they have yet to screw that up. My only gripe about their inkjets are that they cannot print with black only. It irks me to no end that I need cyan, magenta, and yellow in order to print black & white.
stefstef - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
i dont think that way. a lot of companies have sold their unlucrative assets to chinese companies. manufacturing and production isnt the business for the future. knowledge and maybe knowledge sold with hardware might do it. apotheker was right in seeing this way, but maybe very wrong how he turned hp torward it. at the moment they have some interesting products and a sorted linup but the competition is strong. will take its time till hp comes out there oracle, ibm and all the other knowldge and solution players turned to. in a couple of years private or client business hardware might remain for reputation, but certainly wont be the focus of the company imho.fluxtatic - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Even their laserjets are slipping, though. I've got several 4200s at work that are practically bomb-proof. Meanwhile, I'm dispatching techs right and left for M525s that are less than two years old that are falling apart.Coup27 - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Every HP printer we've had at work including our DesignJet 510 has gone wrong after 12-18 months or sounds like it's going to go wrong very shortly. HP printers are great to begin with and the firmware UI is second to none, but the long term quality just isn't there.JeffFlanagan - Friday, January 2, 2015 - link
We just had a repair guy in to work on our old HP Laserjet that had its first minor issue at 500,000 pages printed. He advised us not to replace the printer because HP printer quality is not what it once was.londedoganet - Thursday, January 1, 2015 - link
Did they take the option to print with black ink only out? My (4-year-old) HP inkjet still supports it (it's in the settings for Grayscale), though I've not tried actually removing the color cartridges to see if the printer still works or not.