Former HP CTO Phil McKinney has gone on record about the firm's $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm back in 2010, claiming the manufacturer was never given a chance to find its feet before its fate was sealed.

Speaking during an interview promoting his new book Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation, McKinney said the decision to 'kill' Palm was taken by then HP CEO Leo Apotheker.

He claims the move completely disregarded the original strategy of giving Palm three years to recover is position in the smartphone market.

The long and short of it

"[The Palm acquisition] was going to be a long term effort," McKinney told fellow author Rick Mathieson.

"Palm was struggling and HP was stepping in, doing the acquisition, and we were basically going to take three years hands-off. Palm was basically going to get cash infusions, resources, and expertise. But Palm was going to be given three years to basically get itself positioned to be a market leader in its space.

"Now, fast forward to July of 2011 and, one, you had a swap out of the CEOs - Leo comes in as the new CEO - and HP, for whatever reason - I was not a part of this decision - made the decision to kill it, one year into the three year program.

"This is an example of not committing long term to the resources and not having patience for innovation."

If true, this means HP had already taken the decision to pull support for Palm's webOS platform as its flagship tablet, TouchPad, was launching across the US and Europe in July 2011.

A matter of months

As it happened, HP went public with its move to drop support for both TouchPad and Palm's line up of smartphones on 18 August – little over 2 months after the tablet's debut.

At the time, Apotheker claimed the decision had been taken because Palm's webOS products had missed "clear metrics and milestones" set by HP at the time of Palm's purchase.

"The sell-through of the product was not what we expected," commented Apotheker in a call to analysts.

"Our intention was to solidify webOS as a clear number 2 for mobile platforms. It quickly became clear that pricing parity would not improve."

However, McKinney's comments suggest the webOS venture never stood a chance from the day Apotheker – who was removed as CEO after just 10 months in the position – took the top job at the company.

[source: webOS Nation]