HP has its hands full In taking on Palm

Sorry to throw cold water on what might otherwise be a great celebration for those who love Hewlett-Packard, love Palm and love the fact that they are now merging, but it's far from a slam dunk that the combination of both companies will be a success.

Make no mistake: Both HP and Palm bring to the table brilliant and visionary approaches to computing, mobility and network access, in addition to technology that is absolutely compelling. In the past few months alone, here in the CRN Test Centre, we've given strong praise to both the Palm Pre Plus (as one of the great products of 2010 so far) as well as HP's TouchSmart 9100 PC - - which has by far the best implementation of multi-touch technology of any desktop PC we've ever seen.

While Apple has been off to the races with its iPad and a sneak peak at the forthcoming iPhone 4.0 operating system, the technologies and approaches that both Palm and HP bring to the table could pose a great threat to Steve Jobs' company in Cupertino. But there are several potential quagmires looming for HP in all of this:

For starters, customer expectations for smartphones are a world apart from their expectations for PCs. Call drops at the wrong time? Blame the vendor. Battery life too short? Blame the vendor. Can't sync with precisely the right, custom data application back at the main office? Blame the vendor. Lose the phone while taking the kids to Chuck E Cheese's for a birthday party? Blame the vendor. HP is about to experience new customer expectations in a big way;

It's all about the apps, as we've heard repeatedly, and HP now finds itself at the head of a challenged WebOS ecosystem. Good luck. For all of its power as head of the market-leading Windows platforms, Microsoft has had fits in building third-party developer support for its own mobile platforms. Can HP do any better?

That's not clear, but what is clear is that HP will now find itself having to spend a lot of time and resources in managing that WebOS ecosystem and keeping a developer community happy and profitable. Without strong third-party ISV support, HP will have an uphill fight against Research In Motion, Apple, Google and even Microsoft;

Remember a few years ago when Carly Fiorina was ripped to shreds by critics who said her acquisition of Compaq would be a distraction for HP and that the deal was folly? Mark Hurd has overseen acquisitions of EDS, 3Com and now Palm, and the latter could pose the biggest distraction for HP yet. Internal battles loom over technical integration, cultural integration and strategic integration.

Will HP's printing and imaging unit, for example, spend more resources supporting WebOS than, say, iPhone or BlackBerry - both of which have greater market power? When it comes to touch-screen navigation, will HP stick with WebOS even though its work with Microsoft Surface has been cutting-edge and has led to superior results? Let the internal battles begin.

Having Palm's brand, technology and intellectual property under its roof has almost unlimited upside for HP, given how quickly the mobility space is growing. But it's also got significant downside, too, if things don't go as planned.