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Is Amazon Close to Taking Over webOS?

By Seow Tein Hee - on 30 Sep 2011, 6:37pm

Is Amazon Close to Taking Over webOS?

Given Amazon's recent announcement of its Kindle Fire tablet, rumors of its intention to acquire Palm's webOS from HP might not be too far-fetched.

According to VentureBeat, rumors of Amazon's intention to take webOS off HP's hands have surfaced. While there are other contenders for the mobile OS that had much potential, Amazon is said to be the company that's closest to sealing the deal with HP.

Consider this: Palm's former CEO, Jon Reubenstein, is on Amazon's Board, and just a few days ago, Amazon unveiled a slew of updates to its e-readers, but more importantly, it also announced its first Android tablet, the Kindle Fire.

While the Kindle Fire might put up a strong fight against other tablets, including Apple's iPad that has dominated the tablet market, with an affordable price point, the Android ecosystem is suffering a bout of attacks. With HTC and Samsung agreeing to a patent cross-licensing deal and paying royalties to Microsoft for the use of Google Android on their devices, the Google mobile OS might not be viable for Amazon's future plans for its tablets.

All things considered, licensing webOS from HP is a seemingly good choice for Amazon. Should the acquisition ever happen, there's no telling if Amazon will expand its reach to international markets. Case in point: the Amazon Kindle Fire, and its accompanying services such as Amazon Prime along with the Amazon App Store, isn't readily available outside of the US.

Source: VentureBeat via Mashable

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