While speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch tech conference today, HP CEO Mark Hurd may have broken the hearts of webOS fans all over the world.  Talking to investors at the conference, Hurd said that HP "didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business" and that HP isn't going to "spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn't in any way make any sense."  Apparently HP decided to buy Palm for its intellectual property, more specifically webOS.  Hurd said that HP would like to use webOS on small, web-connected devices.  When we heard that HP had said they planned to "double down" on webOS, we assumed they would at least continue to make Palm phones.  While Palm's webOS and its current lineup of smartphones may not be doing amazing, it seems that HP could help to reinvigorate business by releasing some new webOS-toting hardware, considering that the OS is almost universally adored.  This isn't just bad news for Palm, either, as the disappearance of another competitor from the smartphone OS market means less choice for the consumer, which is always a bad thing.  The full quote can be read below:

"We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP. The WebOS is one of the two ground-up pieces of software that is built as a web operating environment…We have tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices…Now imagine that being a web-connected environment where now you can get a common look and feel and a common set of services laid against that environment. That is a very value proposition."

Via ZDNet