HP Targets Mobile Market With Virtualization Buy
Phoenix Technologies, the Milpitas, Calif.-based software best known for its BIOS technology, said on Friday that Hewlett-Packard has agreed to purchase the assets related to its HyperSpace, HyperCore, and Phoenix Flip instant-on and client virtualization products.
HP will pay $12 million in cash for the assets once the deal closes, which is expected to happen sometime this month.
While the three technologies HP is acquiring could apply to a wide range of HP's product portfolio, their most immediate application could be on future mobile PCs and smart devices resulting from technology HP is getting with its acquisition of Palm.
HP in April said it plans to acquire Palm, maker of the PalmOS operating system and related smartphones, for $1.2 billion.
Because the Palm acquisition has yet to close, HP has yet to disclose specific plans for how it will use the PalmOS technology. However, HP is widely believed to be planning to use it across a wide range of new mobile devices in the future.
In such a case, the new technologies from Phoenix could fit well with those plans, especially given HP's strength as a vendor of mobile PCs and its potential for expanding into the mobile device market.
HP is acquiring three specific virtualization technologies, along with related intellectual property and assets including the software development team, from Phoenix.
The first, HyperSpace, gives instant-on, or "fast boot," capabilities to mobile devices.
The second, HyperCore, optimized file management and file sharing between multiple devices.
The third, Phoenix Flip, lets users toggle back and forth between two operating environments on the same device.
Phoenix Flip could be very useful for a user with a personal laptop and a business laptop and whose business policies disallow the downloading of personal applications on business devices.
With Phoenix Flip, such a user could have a single laptop configured with two virtual desktops, one for personal use and one for business use, and could go between the two as needed.
VMware, the leading virtualization software vendor, is planning to release technology that allows a single mobile phone to be configured with multiple virtual mobile phones which users could access for personal or business use.
HP declined to discuss specific plans for the Phoenix virtualization technologies.
For Phoenix, the sale of its virtualization technologies to HP is the latest in a number of divestitures of non-core technologies as part of a plan to return to its focus on BIOS and core system development.