When HP announced that they would be discontinuing webOS for their smartphones and tablets, and that they were considering moving away from the PC business to focus on the enterprise market instead, there were rumors that Samsung was thinking about acquiring HP’s division, a rumor that was quickly denied later by Samsung themselves. Perhaps it was not the PC division that Samsung was interested in, but rather webOS, or that’s what Digitimes is claiming.
According to Digitimes, Samsung is reportedly interested in purchasing webOS from Samsung, which they plan to use for their own phones and compete against iOS and Android. It seems that when asked to comment about the matter, both HP and Samsung declined to comment, which given that they were quick to deny the PC acquisition rumor makes us think that perhaps there might be some truth behind this rumor.
BGR is claiming that Samsung has issues with Android, what with the patent infringement lawsuit that they’re currently embroiled in with Apple thanks to their Android devices, not to mention that Google has recently acquired Motorola, so by buying webOS Samsung would be in a good place to protect themselves from Apple and Google in the future.
However Samsung has their very own Bada platform, which while not as popular in the US, is seeing plenty of popularity in Europe and apparently Asia as well, which makes us question as to why Samsung would want to juggle three platforms (four if you count Windows Phone 7).
What do you guys think? Is this an unsubstantiated rumor or are there grains of truth in it?
Filed in . Read more about Acquisition, Digitimes, HP, Samsung and Webos.