Six months after Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) announced it would purchase Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion, HP has announced Palm’s very first product as a subsidiary. After weeks of rumors and speculation, HP finally unveiled the Palm Pre 2 this week and it runs on the second iteration of Palm’s own mobile operating system, WebOS 2.0.
The Palm Pre 2 will release in France this Friday, October 22nd, and HP has announced plans to bring the new handset to the United States with support from Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) “in the coming months.” The handset features 16GB of internal storage, GPS, an accelerometer, a 3.5mm audio part, a 3.1-inch HVGA multitouch glass display, Exchange support for syncing with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows, and both 802.11b/g WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 communication. Improvements over the original Palm Pre include a new 5-megapixel camera compared to the original’s 3-megapixel lens, a 1GHz processor, and 512MB of RAM giving the Pre 2 both double the memory and processing speed of its predecessor.
The WebOS 2.0 operating system is more significant than its attendant handset, as it marks Hewlett-Packard’s bid to carve out its own niche in the global mobile operating system landscape. The original version of WebOS had been updated on first a monthly and then bi-monthly basis since Palm Inc. launched the software platform in June 2009, but has seen only a single update since HP officially took control of HP last July. Major co-branded features have been introduced to the operating system, including HP Synergy, which automatically syncs a Palm Pre 2 user’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft Exchange, as well as Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) accounts on their device, allowing them to send messages and manage contacts and calendars in each in a single application.
Another specific feature is Exhibition, which allows app usage while the Palm Pre 2 charges in a Palm Touchstone dock. While other announced features like Facebook and Skype apps are common across major smartphone operating systems, HP has specifically highlighted two features in WebOS 2.0 that give the platform a leg up over Google’s Android and Apple Inc.‘s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iOS. The first, called True Multitasking, allows multiple data, app, and voice functions to operate simultaneously using a Windows-like management system called Stacks. The other is a beta version of the Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) Flash Player 10.1. Apple has infamously restricted Flash functionality on its mobile devices, particularly the iPad tablet PC.
Critical reaction to the WebOS platform has been positive since it launched on the Palm Pre in 2009, and it appears that Hewlett-Packard is keeping the high standard for quality running in the latest Palm branded handheld. Both the phone and the operating system face entrenched competition both in the United States and abroad though.
Even if HP is able to continue Palm’s support in Europe, its chances elsewhere are limited. Research group Gartner (NYSE: IT) published an analysis of worldwide mobile operating system marketshare last August and found that mobile OSs running on the Linux kernel, including WebOS, controlled a mere 2.4% of the market place. With Google’s Android set to overtake Research in Motion‘s (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry OS before the end of calendar 2010, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where HP will be able to compete, let alone win the market.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
