HP Buys Palm for $1.2 Billion. Yes, Seriously.

"HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors."

Of all the companies I was thinking about buying Palm, HP wasn't very high on the list - but now that I think about it, it makes quite a bit of sense. Palm has a lot of expertise in mobile devices, and by all accounts, their new generation of WebOS devices are pretty good. HP on the other hand has deep pockets and really struggled in the mobile space since PDAs became phones; they're never managed to have a very successful mobile device. They need people will skills and vision in the mobile phone space, something they've lacked for many years now. I wonder what this means for Windows phone 7? HP was a launch partner, and I was expecting them to release a Windows phone 7 device...I kind of doubt that will happen now. So, what are your thoughts on this? Engadget has a liveblog of the conference call as well.