HP thinks the TouchPad will be 'better than number one,' if that's even possible

HP's expectations for its new TouchPad tablet are running pretty high -- so high, in fact, that they can only be expressed with a make-believe number. During a recent press conference in Cannes, HP's Eric Cador boldly declared that his company's new slate won't just be the best on the market, it'll be the bestest. Cador explained:

"In the PC world, with fewer ways of differentiating HP's products from our competitors, we became number one; in the tablet world we're going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus."

More after the break...

Samsung Infuse 4G and HP Veer 4G now on sale at AT&T

These two smartphones probably couldn't be any different if they tried -- on the left, we've got the tiny 2.6-inch HP Veer with webOS on board, and on the right is Samsung's Infuse 4G, a giant 4.5-inch Android that costs twice as much on contract. They do have two important things in common, however: they're both available on AT&T right now, and you can read our reviews of each before tossing any money down. Enjoy!

HP Veer 4G review

HP's Jon Rubenstein told us that his company wanted to veer in a new direction, and veer it surely did -- the HP Veer 4G will arguably be the smallest fully-functional smartphone on the market when it goes on sale May 15th. In a nutshell, it's a Palm Pixi Plus in the guise of a Pre, only in a delightfully downsized package with webOS 2.1 and thoroughly modern functionality. What does it feel like to Just Type on its tiny keyboard or throw app cards across its itsy-bitsy 2.6-inch screen? How is it as a pocketable HSPA+ hotspot, and will that extra G decimate its miniscule 910mAh battery? Review after the break...

HP launches DataPass to sell prepaid 3G data plans, service piggybacks on Sprint's network

It looks like HP is getting into the prepaid data game. The company just announced DataPass, a solution that lets you purchase 3G service from your laptop. The service is HP-branded, and that isn't just marketing hype -- the company bought wholesale spectrum data from Sprint and is setting its own prices, effectively turning the PC maker into an MVNO. The no-contract plans start at $5 for a modest 75MB, which HP says is enough for about five hours of use, and stretch up to $30 for 1GB. Look for it as an option across the company's lineup of business notebooks with the Qualcomm Gobi un2400 radio module.

AT&T officially announces HP Veer 4G, available May 15th for $100

Well, it's a bit past May 2nd, but AT&T has now finally officially announced that it will be carrying the HP Veer -- or Veer 4G, as it prefers to call it. The diminutive smartphone will be available on May 15th in your choice of black or white for $99.99 on a two-year contract. That will buy you a 2.6-inch 320 x 400 display, an 800MHz Snapdragon processor, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 5 megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage and, of course, webOS 2.1 for an OS -- all in a package about the size of a credit card. As you might expect, however, that 4G addition does literally come with an asterisk -- the phone itself only has basic HSPA capabilities.

HP may bless webOS with cloud-syncing music store

Rumor has it that HP is preparing to enter the cloud-based music storage fray. A reader at PreCentral sent in what purports to be a confidential PowerPoint presentation indicating the TouchPad will launch with an HP-branded music and movie store, as well as a smart syncing service that caches frequently accessed media for local playback. This may very well be the "Music Synergy" that SVP Steven McArthur mentioned to us. Amazon has already launched such an app and it's all but official that Google is planning the same thing, so it only makes sense that the company would want to imbue webOS with similar powers. We can't verify these claims ourselves and the slide above is clearly a wonky Photoshop job, but it's would hardly be surprising after snatching up Melodeo and the streaming music service Nutsie. And, while webOS and Android are working to banish the quaint ritual of plugging your cellphone into a computer, we can only imagine what the Lala team is up to -- maybe Jobs has them washing his turtlenecks.

HP's keyboard-less webOS phone and Verizon Pre 3 leaked?

Our good friends over at PreCentral have just received a couple of juicy scoops, even for this time of the day. According to their proven tipster, what we're looking at here is an upcoming webOS phone sans keyboard -- a first for Rubinstein's crew, as many of you might already know. While there's not much detail to go with this pic, it appears that this here slate's just slightly bigger than the Pre 3, and that the little spot above the screen could be either a front-facing camera or merely a proximity sensor. Following PreCentral's logic, this could very well be the Stingray that showed up in the list of codenames back in November -- the similarly sized Pre 3 is Mantaray, whereas the smaller Veer is Broadway, leaving Stingray and Windsor unclaimed. But of course, we wouldn't place our bets just yet.Pics & more after the break...

New Acer will be more like Apple, less like HP

The details behind the rift that saw Acer's CEO Gianfranco Lanci (pictured) suddenly resign yesterday are now starting to emerge. Simply put, Acer's board wants the Taiwanese company to be more like Apple and HTC, according to Bloomberg, raking in big profits on fat margins. Lanci's approach, however, was to aggressively increase volumes and using its scale to negotiate cheaper prices from suppliers in a race to steal market share from Dell and HP. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Acer's profit margin in the last fiscal year was just 2.3 percent compared to Apple's 21.5 percent. Daunting, to say the least.More after the break...

HP TouchPad coming June, webOS for PC beta by year's end

We may have to wait until summer to purchase a webOS slate, but it won't be summer's end -- PreCentral reports that the company has confirmed a June release date for the HP TouchPad. At the enterprise-oriented HP Summit in San Francisco, CEO Leo Apotheker finally offered the month of release, and also reportedly said that the company's full-force webOS on PC initiative will begin in a humble way -- the beta will run in a web browser, and we'll see it by the end of the year.

WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

You'd think Leo Apotheker, HP's newest CEO, would want to save a bit of thunder for his March 14th event. Instead, the man continues to unleash stentorian quotes with unabashed candor like today's claim that "HP has lost its soul." He's also making bold proclamations about every HP PC being able to run WebOS and MIcrosoft Windows as an integrated experience in 2012 -- a move the company hopes will create a "massive platform" to attract those all important developers. Apotheker's strategy will reverse Mark Hurd's cost-cutting emphasis with a renewed focus on product quality and innovation -- the latter achieved by breaking down inter-company barriers that currently separate product groups and by boosting the R&D budget already pegged at $2.96 billion last year

iPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom vs. HP TouchPad vs. BlackBerry PlayBook: the tale of the tape

Apple iPad 2

Motorola Xoom

HP TouchPad

BlackBerry PlayBook

Platform	iOS 4.3	Android 3.0	webOS 3.0	BB Tablet OS (QNX)
Display	9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD	10.1-inch	9.7-inch	7-inch LCD
Resolution	1024 x 768	1280 x 800	1024 x 768	1024 x 600
Processor	1GHz dual-core Apple A5	1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2	1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon	1GHz dual-core TI OMAP4430
Memory	?	1GB RAM	1GB RAM	1GB RAM
Storage	16GB / 32GB / 64GB	32GB	16GB / 32GB	16GB / 32GB / 64GB
Front camera	VGA	2 megapixel	1.3 megapixel	3 megapixel
Rear camera	720 / 30p video	5 megapixel AF with dual-LED flash, 720 / 30p video	none	5 megapixel, 1080p video
Cellular radio	Quadband HSPA or CDMA / EV-DO Rev. A	3G with free upgrade to 4G LTE	3G and 4G	3G and 4G
WiFi	802.11a/b/g/n	802.11a/b/g/n	802.11b/g/n	802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth	2.1 + EDR	2.1 + EDR	2.1 + EDR	2.1 + EDR
Accelerometer	3-axis	3-axis	Yes	Yes
Gyroscope	Yes	Yes	Yes	--
Battery	25Wh	6,500mAh	6,300 mAh	5,300 mAh
Thickness	8.8mm	12.7mm	13.7mm	10mm
Weight	601g (WiFi), 607g (Verizon), 613g (AT&T)	725g	740g	425g

Palm Pre 2 launching on Verizon February 17th?

We've been ribbing the Pre 2 lately for being so far past its prime that a launch of any kind on Verizon is starting to seem implausible -- but it looks like these guys might still be willing to throw it out on shelves for a little while. The latest rumor, via an internal product page at a third party retailer, says that the phone will launch in "all channels" on February 17th... just in time for it to be made even less appealing by whatever new gear HP shows off at its event on the 9th. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong hardware -- but hey, if you absolutely must have webOS 2.0 as soon as possible on a carrier-branded device on the States, this thing is still your only way to ride.

HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates

Todd Bradley did promise us there'd be more than just slates on HP's webOS menu and today we can add netbooks to the list of form factors for Palm's famed OS. This heretofore unknown slice of info comes from a carrier training website HP has set up to educate resellers on the strong points of its forthcoming products. The training video on the site speaks of the great synergies that can result from smartphones, slates and netbooks all running the same OS and "speaking" to one another, which echoes Bradley's "connected experience" mantra from a couple of days ago. Smartphones are said to be the beginning of a new family of webOS products, with their larger siblings set to come "soon enough." Is February 9th soon enough?

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war

Palm and HP seem like the happiest of corporate couples right now, but theirs was a heated courtship: according to Palm's latest statement to shareholders, a total of 16 companies were contacted about a deal, and HP was the winner of a month-long bidding war that involved serious offers from five companies -- a bidding war that involved Jon Rubinstein personally warning HP that it had to "significantly and immediately" increase its offer to remain in the game. What's more, HP's winning bid came in at just 20 cents a share more than its primary rival. Yeah, it's juicy -- read on for the full blow-by-blow.

• Palm recognized that it was in trouble in early February, a few weeks before it posted its disappointing quarterly results, and on February 17 the company organized a committee headed by CEO Jon Rubinstein investigate its options -- everything from licensing webOS to selling the company was on the table.
• From February 25 to April 1, Palm's management and consultants talked to a total of 16 companies about doing a deal. Five companies including HP ultimately got to the point of making offers, but only HP is publicly named in the filing -- the other suitors are referred to as Companies A, B, C, and D. Palm was most interested in HP and Companies A and B, while C and D initially only wanted to acquire Palm's patents. It's not clear when D dropped out.
• Palm's board of directors decided that selling the company was the best option in early March. The board thought about selling patents and / or licensing webOS, but decided against it because licensing would dilute the value of Palm's IP and fail to address long-term problems like scale and resources, and management was told to tell potential buyers that they should focus on an "outright acquisition." If you're keeping track, that's the exact opposite of what Jon Rubinstein was saying on April 22.
• HP made its first offer on April 13, for for $4.75, or about a billion dollars, and requested a 30-day period of exclusive negotations. Company A followed up on April 15 with an offer of $600 million in cash, and Company B proposed a stock-for-stock deal that would take longer than the other deals.
• After receiving the offers from A and B, Palm told HP that it wouldn't give it an exclusivity period unless it improved its offer, and HP declined. At the same time, Palm decided that neither A Nor B's proposal were of any value to its shareholders, and told both companies that they weren't competitive. A and B then dropped out of the game.
• On April 18 Company C offered between $6 and $7 per share with a proposed transaction to take place within 14 days, and on April 19 Palm sent both HP and Company C draft merger agreements.
• Palm and HP senior management held meetings on April 20 and 21, resulting in HP upping its offer to $5 per share on April 22. Later that day, Company C dropped its offer to $5.50 and sent Palm a revised merger agreement that contained several worrisome provisions, including a longer, riskier transaction timeline and a $60 million penalty if the deal didn't go through. Palm and Company C engaged in "extensive negotiations" from the 23rd to the 25th, but never managed to work out a compromise.
• While that was going on, on April 24th Jon Rubinstein and his advisors directly told HP that its offer wasn't competitive and that it had to "significantly and immediately" improve its offer in order to remain in the game. HP responded by raising its offer to $5.70 per share (the winning bid) later that day, and Jon Rubinstein told Company C that he had a better offer on April 25th.
• Company C told Palm it wasn't raising its acquisition offer, but offered to buy patents and take a nonexclusive license to webOS for $800 million. The board considered that proposal on the same day and declined.
• From that point on it was all HP -- the two companies negotiated from April 24 to April 28, when the merger was approved by Palm's outside accountants at Goldman Sachs and announced to the world.

Yeah, it's a crazy story, and it gets even wilder: Palm says Company C never signed an NDA, so it's more than likely we'll eventually find out who it was. Your guess is as good as ours -- Lenovo? ZTE? Dell? Either way, it looks like HP pulled this off in the nick of time.

Meet H/Pre

Adding even more drama to an pivotal and transformative year in tech, last week HP announced it will buy Palm for the nice round sum of 1.2 billion dollars -- a move that will position it as a major player in the crowded mobile market. HP is no stranger to mobility -- the iPaq was once a defining mobile product -- but over the years the company has been unable to replicate that success with similar efforts in as the dynamic shifted from PDAs to phones. Buying Palm is a quick way of getting back in the game.

Palm takes its last breath alone as HP swoops in & buys them

At long last the time has finally arrived after months of speculation surrounding the fate of the one time great smartphone manufacturing company that saw itself at the forefront mobile technology. Of all the companies thrown into the pot considering on buying Palm the last couple of months, it certainly came to a surprise that we didn't have to look far as HP got themselves a warm portion of the pie. Yes, the world's dominant PC manufacturer came out of nowhere and bought their long time rival.

After being courted by companies like Lenovo, HTC, and even Huawei, there was no denying that Palm was spiraling downwards faster despite the fact that Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein insisted that the company could survive on its own. The acquisition of Palm surely came in at a minimum cost for the dominant company who is undoubtedly at the top of their game. Buying Palm for a mere $1.2 billion, some would consider HP making out big time on the purchase considering that Palm's stock was once valued close to $14 per share over a year ago. Under the terms of the merger agreement, current Palm shareholders will be given $5.70 for each share. Although there are some talks right now regarding the future of Palm, Jon Rubinstein looks to stay put with the company while the deal is expected to finally close by July 31.

Almost instantly, HP is catapulted into the limelight and their presence will undoubtedly be felt far and wide as they quickly acquire all of Palm's assets – which includes their patent portfolio, device hardware, and webOS. So the question left answered is what HP intends to do now that they've acquired the venerable smartphone maker? Whichever road they choose to go, we're sure that HP will utilize the technology that Palm has built up from the ground up and integrate it in a medley of devices ranging from smartphones, tablets, computers, and everything else in between.

Palm's expertise in touchscreen technology and webOS could become useful for HP as they plan to compete on a grand scale among the premier cell phone manufacturers out there. It's almost ironic looking back earlier in the decade when HP was one of the companies to back Microsoft's Pocket PC platform in the hopes of being a clear competitor to Palm's reign in the PDA market. Ultimately, HP is definitely reinventing themselves with this and we look forward to see how they will be able to translate this purchase into a profitable reign for them.