After throwing a burning gauntlet at Apple's direction in the tablet wars Amazon is going through negotiations to buy Palm from HP, at least according to VentureBeat.
We all know HP is willing to get rid of Palm-- after closing down the webOS device business (as part of the Great Garage Sale) HP is getting rid of any remaining TouchPads by selling them at low, low prices.
The VentureBeat source insists Amazon is "the closest to finalising the deal."
The webOS purchase would make sense for Amazon-- powering the Kindle Fire is an Android version so heavily customised it's hard to tell where the "Android" is. By owning webOS, Amazon would further differentiate the Kindle brand from the rest of the Android market while being free to redesign the OS as it sees fit.
Plus webOS remains a slick and competent mobile OS, despite HP's attempts at (mis)handling it.
VentureBeat concludes Amazon will only sped "a fraction" of what HP originally paid for Palm back in 2010 ($1.2 billion). Either way, the tablet market continues going through fairly interesting routes.
