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The HP Company, founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 is one of the largest computer company in the world and just found an agreement with Palm to buy them for $1.2 Billion. Palm, a smartphone manufacturer based in Sunnyvale, California was founded in 1992 and is led by Jon Rubinstein, company's CEO. Just few months ago Palm was worth about $17.46 per share, while by January this year it was worth $13.41. The bid of $1.2 Billion means that Palm is worth right now $5.70 per share.

The company will remain on the market with it's name and will probably have the same CEO and leaders, but they will also get a lot of help from HP from now on, to accelerate the growth. Hewlett-Packard bought Palm because they seeked to entry on the smartphones market by now, but they didn't managed to do it on their own. However, HP also declared they want to take over Apple in the tablet space and we might see a webOS powered tablet somewhere in the future.

HP abandoned webOS, but they have a real advantage now, as by buying Palm they also have it's patent catalog. It's difficult to become something in the world of smartphones if every time a company can throw patent infrigement suits at you, but it's very different when you have your own suite of patents. People might actually have to be a lot more careful about stepping on you. This news was announced yesterday, and the whispers already started to talk about Rubinstein's faith, but a quote from the official release talks about him and assures everybody Rubinstein will still be Palm's CEO if he doesn't change his mind: "Palm's current Chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company".