HP is reportedly looking for potential customers to sell its mobile-computing patents, as part of its efforts to strengthen the company’s financial status.
Bloomberg reported that the patents on sale are related to webOS, which is the smartphone and tablet-computer OS acquired by the US firm through its 2010 purchase of Palm for $1.2bn.
Earlier this year, HP sold the webOS to South Korean firm LG Electronics, while retaining Palm’s cloud computing assets, which include source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts and would continue to support Palm users.
During recent months, HP has eliminated some restrictions that made the patents unappealing to purchasers, while patents turned out to be more attractive to forthcoming buyers, and more probable to get hold of a higher price.
The world’s second-largest PC maker is working to make progress following several years of management chaos, drop in sales and profit and a balance sheet hurt by bad acquisitions.
