Hewlett-Packard (HP) is seeking buyers for some of its mobile-computing patents, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed people with direct knowledge of the matter. According to the same source, HP has approached potential buyers about its portfolio of patents, including those related to WebOS, the smartphone and tablet-computer OS that HP bought through its 2010 acquisition of Palm.
HP has recently removed some restrictive conditions that made the patents unattractive to buyers. That made the patents more appealing to potential buyers, and more likely to attract a higher price, the sources added.
HP is trying to recover from several years of management turmoil, declining sales and profit and a balance sheet damaged by bad acquisitions. HP CEO Meg Whitman is stabilizing revenue, returning more cash to shareholders and has developed a mobile-computing approach centered around Microsoft’s Windows OS and Google’s Android.
HP failed to turn Palm’s WebOS into a success. Whitman’s predecessor, Leo Apotheker, promised to incorporate WebOS into the company’s personal computers and shipped an ill-fated tablet called the TouchPad. He later shuttered the Palm division and halted device production.
Whitman turned WebOS, designed for smartphones and tablets, into an open-source software project and rebranded it as a subsidiary called Gram. HP sold the operating system’s code to LG in February this year. HP kept WebOS’s patents under that deal and licensed them to LG. The agreement would be unlikely to hinder HP’s ability to sell its WebOS patents, said one of the sources with knowledge of the sales process.
