As we mentioned Sunday, Jon Rubinstein and Todd Bradley will be having a "A conversation" with Federated Media CEO John Battelle at 9:10am Pacific / 12:10 Eastern. We’ll be curious to see what they have to say about the roll-out of webOS 2.0, the relative lack of carrier-support for the Pre 2, and whatever else they have on their mind (the PalmPad is probably a safe bet). There’s also a "special announcement" planned immediately after their chat, but it’s not clear whether that’s related to Palm and HP or not.

So join us as we watch their talk and if you miss it, fret not, we’ll be bringing you the news as it happens. 

Update 2: it’s over and there wasn’t much new, stay tuned for a quick summary.

Source: web 2.0 Summit

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You know and love @MrKal_El on Twitter, now know and love him here as he gives us his opinion on how Palm and HP need to make a splash, and soon.

Recently I’ve been engaged in a bit of a debate (on Twitter, naturally) regarding Palm and HP at CES 2011 and potential for the reveal of the much-rumored PalmPad. If you were to ask me, I’d say that January of next year is too late to reveal the PalmPad in what is fast becoming a crowded tablet market.

So I’m going to take a moment to expand a bit on what I feel would be a agressive (but possible) release schedule for webOS hardware and software to succeed in the current market.

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Finally, Palm and webOS gets a nice #2 ranking among smartphone platforms for anything. When you start talking about the likes of 3D mobile gaming, it’s obvious who number one is: Apple and iOS. What is unclear is who follows, and it depends on which group exactly we’re talking about.

If you’re talking all mobile devices, it’s murky whether Nintendo or Sony follow, or is there another smartphone contender they have to deal with. “Android?” you might postulate. HP senior exec and former PalmOne CEO Todd Bradley would disagree, he’ll tell you that webOS is the number two 3D gaming platform. In fact, he did just that during a TechCrunch Disrupt interview:

“We’re the second largest 3D gaming platform in the world today.”

Of course, the question then becomes, what metric is Bradley using? Is he talking about available titles, device unit sales, or some combination of the two? It’s hard to pin down exactly how many 3D apps are available for iOS, webOS, or Android (nobody’s got the patience to sort through thousands of apps like that), but we’ll side with Bradley and say it’s safe to declare webOS #2 in that race. Of course, there are still a dozen other ways that Palm and webOS fall behind (for instance, there are some 5,000 apps available for webOS, vs. the 80,000 in the Android Market and 250,000 in the iOS App Store), but it’s nice to be able to claim number two for something.

Source: TechCrunch

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If the most recent ChangeWave report is any indication, HP and Palm have their work cut out for them in the market of public perception. According to their survey of prospective smartphone buys, 0% (or at least significantly less than 1%) of respondents indicated an interest in buying a webOS product. That’s in spite of the fact that more webOS users reported being “very satisfied” with their device than BlackBerry or Windows Mobile (both of which garnered more potential customers). Meanwhile, interest in Android has risen to the point that 37% of those surveyed were going to the green machine, while 38% wanted an iPhone in their pocket.

HP’s executives seem to understand what they’re up against. At the recent HP analyst event, HP Personal Systems Group Executive Vice President Todd Bradley dropped a delightfully crunchy line: the Personal Systems Group (under which Palm falms) is going to “aggressively attack” the smartphone market. On the other hand, Bradley indicated that the size of the App Catalog has doubled since July 1, though our own tracking indicates growth of 50% in that time. Don’t get us wrong; 50% growth is tremendous (that’s 1550 new apps since the start of July), but we’re not going to stretch that to a “doubled.” We’ll just chalk it up to a PalmPad-style slip-of-the-tongue.

We certainly hope that aggressively attacking includes strong carrier partnerships, serious and widespread advertising, and a quality line of diverse, powerful, and desireable webOS products. Otherwise, well, we can’t see consumer interest in Palm ticking up otherwise.

Source: Investor Place, CNET

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HP has already let loose the word that they’d be releasing a webOS-based tablet in 2011, but in todays’ Analyst Meeting, HP EVP Todd Bradley was the first HP employee to call it the PalmPad, a trademark HP filed for in July:

We’ve already announced the expansion of our future product portfolio well beyond smartphones. We’ll have a webOS-powered PalmPad that will be set for release early in 2011.

While it’s always possible that Bradley is simply a very avid PreCentral reader and so knows that PalmPad is one of the leading rumored names for the webOS tablet, we’re thinking that until further notice, ‘PalmPad’ is the leading contender for what HP will be calling the webOS Slate/Tablet.

via HP Data Central

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HP is in the midst of their Securities Analyst Meeting right now and we’re awaiting a presentation by Personal Systems Group Executive Vice President Todd Bradley, who yesterday told the world he didn’t want HP to try be Apple. He’ll be on at 3:15 Pacific and we’ll let you know if he drops any news.

Before he does, though, it looks like his presentation slides are out and available for download and so we did, gleaning the information you see above. Looks as if Bradley is confirming our earlier rumor that they had sent more than 200 employees over to Palm. Additionally, he’s noting an acceleration in the number of apps available for webOS since the acquisition and promising "accelerated investments in product development." 

As you might guess, it’s impossible for somebody from HP to discuss webOS without mentioning Tablets and (sigh) printers and so the next two slides make it clear it’s on the agenda: HP apparently sees webOS as being in the center of a whole slew of different types of devices and believes that webOS is "Built to grow beyond smartphones," noting that it "scales seamlessly across multiple screen sizes and devices." That’s a point we’ve been making for some time now, but knowing that HP believes it after (presumably) using it on something other than 320×480 (Pre) or 320×400 (Pixi) is heartening.

We’ll be listening in live and update you if and when Bradley fills in the gaps from these powerpoint slides – the rest of which you can see after the break!

Source: HP Data Central

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Todd Bradley, HP’s Executive Vice President, Personal Systems Group (and former Palm CEO and potential candidate as the future HP CEO) joined Michael Arrington onstage for TechCrunch Disrupt. Harry McCracken of Technologizer caught one bit we aren’t surprised to hear: HP won’t license webOS to other hardware makers.

Bradley says that he expects that the tablet market, which HP plans on entering in a big way, will be a $40 Billion-with-a-B market in the next few years. Bradley also mentioned that next year he believes his company will sell 15 million webOS-powered printers. Bradley sees webOS offering a consistent user interface between phones and tablets (and printers, we guess).

Finally, Bradley straight up says that "We are not trying to be Apple," a turn of phrase we’re happy to hear for various reasons that – in the interest of avoiding a flamewar – we’ll leave to your imagination.

Update: Full video of the interview is after the break!

Source: TechCrunch

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Sometimes companies like HP use their money to make problems just go away. Such is the case with Mark Hurd and the sexual harassment allegation that ended his career as HP’s CEO. In order to make Hurd’s exit as smooth as possible, the HP board lined the way with $12.2 million in cash as well as the choice to cash in more than 330,000 shares of HPQ stock (approximately $16 million, prior to the 10% plunge his exit precipitated) plus an extended option to purchase an additional 775,000 shares up until September 7.

The whole deal releases HP of any liability, but has to sting quite a bit for Hurd. Not only does he lose a job he clearly wanted to keep, but he’s also losing out on a three-year $100 million contract that was reportedly in negotiation to keep him on as CEO.

HP CFO Cathie Lesjak is serving as interim-CEO while the search for a new CEO and chairman is under way. Lesjak, a 24-year veteran of HP, has taken herself out of the running, though that hasn’t stopped her name from being bandied around. More serious in-the-running candidates include HP EVP of Personal Systems Todd Bradley; Ann Livermore, HP’s EVP of Technology Solutions Group (Enterprise); and Bob Wayman, retired HP CFO and interim CEO after Carly Fiorina was forced out. Bradley, as you may recall, was the CEO of PalmOne (the hardware division of a divided Palm, Inc) from 2001 to 2005, when he was recruited to HP by Hurd. Ranked by Fortune as one of tech’s smartest executives, Bradley is believed to have been instrumental in arranging HP’s $1.2 billion takeover of Palm.

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April 28th, aka the day we heard that HP was buying Palm, HP exec Brian Humphries said during the conference call that "We intend to continue to be a strategic partner for Microsoft. They’re a huge piece of our business today, and will continue to be so." That’s no doubt true, but in the context of the call it seemed to imply that HP might continue its iPaq line of Windows Mobile phones and perhaps stay on as a partner with Microsoft in creating Windows Phone 7 devices. Indeed, they were listed as a hardware partner for Windows Phone 7 at one time, but had recently dropped off that list.

Speaking to CNBC today, VP Todd Bradley said that HP would "exclusively use its webOS software" for smartphones, officially dropping Windows Phone 7 from their future plans.  Bradley also confirmed that HP has no plans to create an Android smartphone

No surprise, of course, but gratifying to hear that HP isn’t about to play the game of trying to support multiple operating systems on their smartphones. 

Source: CNBC; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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After being off the press radar since before the acquisition by HP, former CEO turned GM of Palm Jon Rubinstein is set to appear for the first time in a talk with HP’s Todd Bradly.   The session begins tomorrow at 3PM at Brainstorm Tech (where in-person registration will set you back a cool $3500) where the topic will undoubtedly be Palm and webOS, and HP has invited you to join in on the web feed for free by using coupon code BTVTWT at the event’s website.

Will we see a product announcement or any insight into the company’s roadmap?  If recent presentations at other tech conferences are any indication, probably not, but it’ll be great to see one of the catalysts behind webOS’s presence in the market place back in action.

Via: @hpnews

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