There's been a lot of speculation surrounding HP and what it might do with webOS ever since the company announced that it would no longer create hardware for the mobile operating system. Samsung has been rumored to be one of webOS's suitors on more than one occasion, but today a new company was named as being close to acquiring Palm/webOS from HP: Amazon. According to a "well-placed source" speaking with VentureBeat, Amazon is one of a few entities in the running to purchase Palm from HP, and the retailer is reportedly the closest among the pack to sealing the deal with HP. Neither HP nor Amazon commented on the rumor. However, VentureBeat points to an interview Jon Rubenstein conducted with This is my next back in July in which Rubenstein suggests Amazon as potentially being "a great partner" to help webOS grow.
Although it might be kind of strange to see Amazon purchase Palm from HP considering that we just saw Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveil the Android-powered Kindle Fire, such a move could also make some sense. As pointed out by Evelyn Rusli at The New York Times, Amazon could be interested in Palm's vault of patents, especially if the retailer plans to continue to create more not-just-an-ereader devices like the Kindle Fire. After all, we've seen just about every major tech company involved the the tablet game get tied up patent suits, so Amazon may want some way to help protect itself in the future. Whether or not Amazon would actually create webOS hardware at some point down the line is a mystery, but hey, it couldn't hurt to hope. What do you all make of this rumor? Think Amazon would actually go through with a purchase of Palm?
Via BGR, NYT, VentureBeat
