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Live from HP / Palm's 'Think Beyond' webOS event!
We're inside and things are getting underway -- the event officially starts at the times below. Read along after the break to see what's happening right now! 07:00AM - Hawaii 10:00AM - Pacific 11:00AM - Mountain 12:00PM - Central 01:00PM - Eastern 06:00PM - London 07:00PM - Paris 09:00PM - Moscow 11:30PM - Mumbai 03:00AM - Tokyo (February 10th) 05:00AM - Sydney (February 10th)
Jon Rubinstein live from D: Dive Into Mobile
Palm / HP's Jon Rubinstein is just about to take the stage at the D: Dive Into Mobile event. Will there be talk of past failures? Future triumphs? Will he break out a rumored device? Will he breakdance? Only the liveblog knows for sure... so keep reading after the break!
HP Slate no longer a consumer product, will arrive for enterprise this fall
We've sensed that something's been up with the HP Slate for a while now, and it looks like we've finally gotten the first solid confirmation that the Windows 7 tablet as unveiled by Steve Ballmer at CES in January won't hit the consumer market as planned -- speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, HP Personal Systems Group VP Todd Bradley just said that the Slate will be "more customer-specific than broadly deployed," and that it would launch the Microsoft-based tablet "for the enterprise" in the fall. That fits right in with HP telling us the other day that it was in "customer evaluations" as it prepared for the "next steps," and based on followup comments from Bradley and Palm head Jon Rubinstein, it certainly sounded like the company will focus Windows tablets at the enterprise and develop a variety of webOS devices for the consumer market. Of course, there's no official announcement yet, so we'll see what happens -- the only thing that we can confidently say is that the HP Slate has definitely succeeded the iPad as the tech industry's favorite vaporware tablet.
webOS 2.0 coming 'later this year,' says HP's Rubinstein
HP's Jon Rubinstein -- formerly of Palm CEO fame, of course -- just mentioned in an interview with Fortune that webOS 2.0 is on track for "later this year." Considering that 2010 is more than half over, that doesn't leave a whole heck of a lot of time -- but with a mix of presumed kick-ass HP hardware in the pipeline running webOS, we imagine this should all dovetail nicely. On a related note, Rubinstein again drove home the point that they're developing new hardware "aggressively," so let's hope we finally see a Pre 2, a Palmpad, or heck, a frickin' LifeDrive 2 in the next few months.
Palm files 8-K with SEC on merger, VP of PR Lynn Fox leaving
Okay, we've got lots of Palm news tonight, so take our hand and let us walk you through it. For starters, the company filed a 8-K report with the SEC today, which is a requirement when major changes (e.g. a merger with HP) are happening. According to the paperwork, the transaction / acquisition was expected to close by July 1st... but it might actually be anytime within the first week of July. A PreCentral forums member claims to have listened in on a shareholding meeting today and heard that from VP of Investor Relations Teri Klein. Additionally, he also heard that under HP, current Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein will head up a smartphone / mobility unit that's culled from both his company and another HP unit. Finally, news has come in this evening in that VP of Public Relations Lynn Fox is joining the likes of Matias Duarte, Rich Dellinger, and Caitlin Spaan in leaving Palm. Though we understand she's staying with Palm through next week, she is definitely not sticking around -- according to her Facebook page, Fox "respectfully declined the opportunity to join HP after its acquisition of Palm" and will be pursuing other opportunities. So, when can we get back to talking about those mysterious new webOS devices? That aren't printers?
HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war
Palm and HP seem like the happiest of corporate couples right now, but theirs was a heated courtship: according to Palm's latest statement to shareholders, a total of 16 companies were contacted about a deal, and HP was the winner of a month-long bidding war that involved serious offers from five companies -- a bidding war that involved Jon Rubinstein personally warning HP that it had to "significantly and immediately" increase its offer to remain in the game. What's more, HP's winning bid came in at just 20 cents a share more than its primary rival. Yeah, it's juicy -- read on for the full blow-by-blow.
HP and Palm: what happens next
HP announcing that it's going to buy Palm in a $1.2b all-cash transaction certainly took everyone by surprise, but in many ways the deal makes perfect sense. HP is a gigantic player in the tech industry but has no appreciable presence in rapidly-growing mobile space, and Palm -- well, you should know how we feel about Palm by now. Even still, we can't say we were expecting this one, and it looks like most of you weren't either -- HP only got two percent of the vote in our "who should buy Palm" poll, while Engadget (that's us!) got... fourteen percent. Oops. But now that we've had a day to wrap our heads around the news and think about what Palm and HP said to us last night and to analysts on the conference call announcing the deal, we think we've got a pretty good set of educated guesses on how things might shake out over the next few months. Read on!
HP: 'We're doubling down on webOS,' Palm: 'That was the whole point'
We just spoke with both Brian Humphries, HP's Senior VP of Strategy and Corporate Development, and Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, and came away with a pretty positive picture for the future of Palm. The money quote is that HP plans to be "doubling down on webOS," and that was confirmed in speaking with Palm's honcho, who says that "that was the whole point." Not only that, but we've confirmed on both ends that Jon will be staying on with the company, along with much of the existing Palm hierarchy. There are plenty of transition details to work out, but Jon says there will be lots of time for all that during regulatory and shareholder approval. The word is that Palm's existing hardware roadmap is basically untouched at this point by this acquisition, but the good news on the HP end of things is that the company sees webOS as a "prized asset," and they intend to "scale it across multiple connected devices." That sounds like tablets to us, and HP didn't beat back that assumption. On the Palm hardware end, Jon is very fond of saying "scale," referring to the money and manufacturing resources at HP's disposal, but he also says that he sees Palm working hand in hand with HP on devices. One point that both companies were less clear on was the Palm branding itself -- you know, whether Palm will stay Palm. Both Brian and Jon said those kinds of details would be worked out as the acquisition went forward, but offered no concrete comment on it otherwise. Money-wise we asked if Jon thought HP could provide the sort of "ammunition" to beat Apple, Google, and Microsoft at their own mobile game, and Jon says "I don't think HP would do this unless they were willing to make the kind of investment necessary to win." HP calls webOS a "compelling operating system," but that Palm didn't have the money to compete and "scale it across multiple form factors," and that it's exactly HP's financial wherewithal, brand, and corporate culture that it brings to the table. HP and Palm won't comment specifically on the forthcoming device roadmap, but HP did confirm that it had tested the platform "to make sure it scales." They keep saying "scale," but all we're hearing is "tablet."
Another Palm exec is out... and CEO Jon Rubinstein is next?
Things must be getting a little weird at Palm right now, as every day seems to add a new piece to an already confusing puzzle. In just two weeks' time the company has gone from a potential free agent, to a lone wolf, and then back to prospective purchase. Adding more noise to the proceedings, TechCrunch is now reporting that another senior staffer has hit the road, and this time it's Caitlin Spaan, Palm's VP of carrier marketing. Her name gets added to what looks like a growing list of recent Palm departures (not to mention that entire marketing department we hear has been canned). More troubling than that news, however, is a rumor which also appears on TC suggesting that CEO (and putative savior of the company) Jon Rubinstein may be on his way out as well. This report is pure hearsay at this point, but if true would be a major admission on Palm's part that its plans to kickstart the ailing company nearly two years ago are failing (or have just plain failed). Of course, we need to stress that this is just rumor at this stage -- the company offered no comment to Business Insider -- and until we get more solid word, it should be treated as such. As for us, we're hoping the company can pull something salvageable together from this mess and figure out a way to compete at a level of increasingly more difficult stakes. Update: Apparently Jon showed up in a room of developers at the company's currently-ongoing dev camp and said "I'm still here," to big laughs. Hang in there, man!
Palm CEO still thinks company can go it alone, open to webOS licensing deals
In the face of a near-constant stream of buyout rumors the past couple weeks, Palm boss Jon Rubinstein is holding the line he's held ever since he's taken the helm -- well most of the line, anyway. In a chat with Financial Times today, the CEO said that he still believes that "Palm can survive as an independent company" and that he's got a plan to get the company spitting black ink rather than red, but that "if someone comes to the board with a reasonable offer of course it's something [they'd] have to consider," which isn't anything materially different than he's said in the past -- it's just good business sense, and it's a very cautiously-worded soundbite. Rubinstein did say a couple things of note, though. First, he mentioned that they're working "fast and furious on new handsets" with a "strong pipeline" of new goodies, which gives us great hope that we're finally going to see something that doesn't look like a Pre or a Pixi soon. He's also opening up to the idea of licensing webOS to third parties, confirming sentiment we'd heard a few days back; he's looking at it from a pretty objective business perspective, saying that "if there's an appropriate strategic relationship or business deal that makes sense to us then of course we would license webOS because obviously the more scale we get the more the benefit there is to us." That sounds good from our end, especially thinking back to the overwhelming awesomeness of the mighty Sony NZ90 back in the Palm OS days. Any way you look at it, though -- independent or acquired -- it sounds like Rubinstein has every intention of making more waves in 2010.
Palm's Jon Rubinstein: 'I think we have a better product than Droid'
It's been a rough month or so for Palm, as the only thing keeping the company's tanking stock price from falling completely into the gutter are buyout rumors -- RIM here, HTC there, even Lenovo, for some crazy reason. But that's apparently not enough to get CEO Jon Rubinstein down: he just sat down with Fortune for a remarkably candid chat, saying that although his company hasn't done so well, he still thinks there's potential -- and that he obviously wishes some things had gone better. The big one? The Verizon launch -- and Jon thinks that if the Droid and Pre had had their launch dates flipped, the Pre would have done better. One of the analysts on our earnings call asked if we had launched when Droid launched, and Droid launched when [we] launched at Verizon, would the story have been opposite? I said I think we have a better product than Droid, and customers would have been happier with it. It's certainly an interesting thought experiment, but we've always said that the Pre's marketing had a lot to do with its failure on Big Red as well -- and Palm apparently agrees, since it's fired its ad agency and Jon told Fortune that Verizon's changing their ads as well. As for the buyout rumors? Well, obviously Jon didn't say much, but it sounds like he's not too interested -- although that can always change if the right suitor comes to the table . We'll see if Ruby actually manages to turn things around -- we've got some ideas on how to make that happen. Hit the source link for the full interview.
Palm moving to Android to stay alive? Not according to Palm
You may be seeing a rumor doing the rounds today about Palm throwing in the towel and moving to the Android platform as a means of survival -- but just hang on. Most reports are citing an email that made its way to the inbox of what looks like every major tech outlet, stating that CEO Jon Rubinstein issued an internal memo to software developers at the company about the switch. The supposed memo quotes Jon as saying, "While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system, consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and our customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform." The plan -- according to this email -- would be to create a kind of Sense UI-ish webOS interface on Palm devices, while leveraging Android's market footprint. The anonymous emailer went on to say that the full memo would be made available on Wikileaks at midnight last night. But guess what? Not only did the memo not appear at the stroke of 12, but when we picked up the phone and actually spoke to Palm, they had a pretty quick response. Their answer? Our sources at the company essentially laughed when they heard this news, and they emphatically stated that there was no memo, and no move internally towards Android. Furthermore, many of the reports are citing a bunk piece of news from Monday which erroneously stated that Palm had halted production -- that news has also been refuted by the company. Admittedly, our minds reel at the concept of Android with a webOS UI, but until we get some real, verifiable evidence of that (and not just a random email), we're going to assume it's not happening. You should do the same.
Palm boss Rubinstein sends letter to employees, talks turnaround
There's very likely a little unrest inside Palm's corporate walls today on news that the company's falling a little short of its financial expectations, so CEO Jon Rubinstein has wasted no time firing off an all-employee letter explaining the sitch while trying to calm some nerves in the process. As analysts had feared, Rubinstein clearly isn't pleased with the way the company's launch on Verizon has gone -- but he's already got a plan in place involving some 200 "Brand Ambassadors" deployed to Verizon stores to help get reps the straight dope on Palm products and a refreshed ad campaign across several mediums. Is it enough? That remains to be seen, but in the meantime, he's quick to note that they've got around $500 million in cash in the bank just for a rainy day like this. There's an all-hands meeting scheduled for after Palm's earnings call next month -- would be interesting to be a fly on the wall for that, wouldn't it?
Live from All Things D at CES 2010
We're live at the All Things D event at CES 2010. We're slated to see conversations with Jon Rubinstein, Reed Hastings, and Andy Rubin, so stay tuned -- we start at 3:30PM PT!
Palm's Jon Rubinstein named a 'Geek of the Year'
Just to clarify right out of the gate, the "year" Fast Company is referring to is 2009, but nonetheless, it's an award we're sure Jon is happy to have. 11 geeks were found worthy of the "Geek of the Year" award in '09, with the likes of Evan Williams and Biz Stone (Twitter), David S. Goyer (the creator of Flash Forward on ABC), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Neill Blomkamp (the writer of District 9) joining him. The justification for Jon making the cut? "He came on board as the new chairman of Palm and brought about the Web OS and the Palm Pre, the start of a line of products that is the best hope for reintroducing the geek masses to Palm." After speaking with him on our first-ever Engadget Show and falling head over heels in love with webOS, we can't help but agree. And yes, after last year's introduction at CES, it's all we can do to contain our excitement for this Thursday.
webOS 1.3.5 coming to CES: better performance and more app storage, says Palm CEO
Here's something to glean from Palm's recent quarterly call, besides the still less-than-profitable fiscal number, of course. CEO Jon Rubinstein divulged that yes, we will indeed be seeing webOS 1.3.5 during CES early next month. Even better, we got some insight into what we'll be expecting from the update: more application storage (hooray!), better WiFi / app performance, improved battery life, and "increase Pixi speed and responsiveness" -- interesting that Pixi is called out solo for that last one, but we're not about to read too much into that just yet. Good news all around, but let's hope there's still a surprise or two left in store come January 7th.
The Engadget Show - 001: Jon Rubinstein, Bit Shifter, iPod event, Moto CLIQ, N900
Well it's finally, really happened. The very first Engadget Show is done and ready for your viewing pleasure. First up, Josh sits down with Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein for an in-depth discussion, then Nilay and Paul join the fray for a dissection of recent news -- including the recent Apple iPod event, the Motorola CLIQ, and a hands-on look at an early version of the as-yet-unreleased Nokia N900! We're still getting our T's crossed and I's dotted for the Zune and iTunes subscriptions, but you can download the full HD video below -- or just sit back and watch the streaming file up above. Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Paul Miller, Nilay Patel Special guest: Jon Rubinstein Produced and directed by: Chad Mumm Music by: Bit Shifter Visuals by: Paris and outpt Download the Show: The Engadget Show - 001 (HD) / The Engadget Show - 001 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show - 001 (Extra small - 319MB) Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V). [RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically. HD torrent: http://nixil.net/engadget_show_001.torrent
Thanks for coming out to The Engadget Show!
People of Earth -- we wanted to say thank you to everyone who came out to the first-ever taping of The Engadget Show last night! We couldn't have asked for a better crowd, and Jon Rubinstein was an amazing first guest. We're going to have the full video on the site this week, but if you can't wait till then, the folks over at Gear Patrol took some photos and did a writeup, and Weblogs Inc.'s director Brad Hill snapped some great pictures as well -- hit the links below and check it all out.Note: If you were in the audience and want to know how to get your Touchstone, we'll have all that info in the video post!Read - GP Events: The Engadget ShowRead - Brad's photos
The Engadget Show is today -- here's all the info!
The Engadget Show is happening today, Sunday, September 13th, in New York City. Our first guest will be Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein!The show will take place at the Tishman Auditorium at Parsons The New School for Design. The beautiful venue (which you can see in a photo after the break) is located at 66 W. 12th Street between 5th and 6th Ave. Seating is limited and tickets will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis -- which means if you want to join us in the audience for the show, you'll have to arrive early and be prepared for a little wait. Here are some facts about the show: The show is graciously sponsored by Nokia, and hosted by Parsons The New School for Design Bit Shifter (one of our favorite chiptune artists) will be playing live at the first show! The total show length will be around an hour Here is what you need to know if you're coming today to be part of the audience: There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free The event is all ages The venue seats just over 450 people Parsons students are welcomed, and we encourage them to come! Tickets will be available for pickup at the Tishman Auditorium at 2PM today, and we're strongly encouraging people to get their tickets and not stand in line -- just pick up a ticket and then return in a couple hours for the taping. If you have a ticket, you'll have a seat! You cannot pick up tickets for other people -- if you want your friend to get a ticket, bring your friend! The show begins at 5PM, and doors will open at 4:30PM -- no one will be seated after 4:50PM Hold on to your ticket stubs -- we have a very good reason which you'll find out about at the taping! If you're going to tweet about the show (you know you want to), feel free to include #engadgetshow Sponsored by:
The Engadget Show tapes Sunday, September 13th -- our first guest is Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein
The Engadget Show gets underway this coming Sunday, September 13th, in New York City, and we're super excited to announce that the first person we'll be sitting down with for a one-on-one conversation is Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein! Between the recent launch of the Pixi, the introduction Pre and webOS, and all the other hubbub surrounding the company, we think it will be quite an interesting chat.The show -- which will be a mix of one-on-one interviews, roundtable discussions, short video segments, and live music -- will take place at the Tishman Auditorium at Parsons The New School for Design. The Show will be filmed live once a month -- but if you can't make it, don't worry. We'll be bringing the full video back home to Engadget (and as a free download in the iTunes Store, Zune Marketplace, etc.) for your viewing pleasure. The full show should be online just a few days after we tape! The beautiful venue (which you can see in a photo after the break) is located at 66 W. 12th Street between 5th and 6th Aves. Seating is limited and tickets will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis -- which means if you want to join us in the audience for the show, you'll have to arrive early and be prepared for a little wait. Here are the facts you need to know about the show: The show is graciously sponsored by Nokia, and hosted by Parsons The New School for Design Bit Shifter (one of our favorite chiptune artists) will be playing live at the first show! The total show length will be around an hour Here is what you need to know if you want to be part of the audience: There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free The event is all ages The venue seats just over 450 people Parsons students are welcomed, and we encourage them to come! Tickets will be available for pickup at the Tishman Auditorium at 2PM on the 13th, and we're strongly encouraging people to get their tickets and not stand in line -- if you have a ticket, you'll have a seat! You cannot pick up tickets for other people -- if you want your friend to get a ticket, bring your friend! The show begins at 5PM, and doors will open at 4:30PM If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia@engadget.com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow@engadget.com. Sponsored by:
