Qualcomm buys Palm smartphone patents from Hewlett-Packard

US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc yesterday acquired patents of smartphone maker Palm Inc. from Hewlett-Packard Co (HP), for an undisclosed sum.

Qualcomm said that the acquisition covers 1,400 granted patents and pending patent applications from the US and about 1,000 more foreign patients, including China, the UK, Germany, Japan and South Korea.

HP said that the patents sold cover technologies that include fundamental mobile operating system techniques.

HP had acquired Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion in order to enter the lucrative tablet and smartphone markets, but HP tablets made with Palm's webOS operating system failed to catch on.

In August 2011, HP said that it would stop development of its webOS smartphones and tablets after its flagship TouchPad tablet running on the WebOS software bombed in the market.

Just a month after it was launched in 2010, HP had discontinued the TouchPad due to poor demand since it was priced the same as Apple's iPad.

Last February HP sold its webOS unit to South Korea's LG Electronics Inc, for an undisclosed sum.