Credit where due: Derek Kessler called it last November 21

The time: November 19th, 2009. The place: PreCentral.net Round Table. The mood: a little dark, but we hadn't yet known that Palm would be up on the auction block. The topic: the ideal candidate to purchase Palm. Our own Derek Kessler called it:

I think that the best company to buy Palm would be one that has not yet broken into the smartphone business. Companies like Apple or RIM already have a preconceived notion of how smartphones should work and obviously webOS doesn’t fit that mold. So who? HP. “But HP already makes smartphones!” you say. Yes, they do. But those are Windows Mobile smartphones and they’ve been selling in smaller and smaller quantities every year. For a while it looked like HP might actually be getting out of the smartphone game all together before they debuted the underwhelming iPAQ 910 last summer. Outside of the handheld space HP has shown a knack for innovation and has handily eclipsed rival Dell as the top PC seller in the land. Adding Palm, and specifically webOS, to HP’s portfolio would give them an instant foothold in the smartphone market (as their purchase of former Palm parent company 3Com is doing for networking equipment) and would give Palm access to billions of dollars for R&D that could lead to much more impressive handsets. While I doubt that Palm is actively courting potential suitors, anybody that buys Palm is going to need deep pockets and a hands-off approach, and I believe that HP fits that profile to a tee.

Credit where it's due, Derek. Nice job.