HP+Palm: its a tablet play

I read this article recently that mentioned how the HP acquisition of Palm spells trouble for Microsoft & Windows Phone.

I have to disagree. The article focuses on Kin, which is basically a rev’d up Sidekick with no app store. Danger was purchased late in the game and MS’s exec team couldn’t pull Kin & WP7 together in time, once MS decided in early Jan 2008 to switch directions on WP7 and go with the Dorado client. Ballmer has even said they will merge over the next couple years when they get their shit together ;).

Windows Phone is also making a larger play in the app world, and I think more developers will be attracted to it once they have a familiar toolset and how good the OS is. The xbox/XNA game piece also gives it an edge over competition, including Palm who has a fledgling app store right now.

Overall I think HP is making a tablet, rather than a phone, play here. They’ve got to compete with Dell who is repositioning themselves in this market, adopting Android as their tablet OS.

The iPhone OS scaled very well to the iPad and I can see HP doing the same with the WebOS. The HP Slate is a good device although bulky, and Windows 7 doesn’t scale well on touch devices yet. Microsoft is already working on comparable OS’s and I think once they nail Windows 7 on tablets they’ll be a leader in the space (take Courier for example).

HP will still continue to produce PC’s with Windows 7 on them, but the future is tablets.