HP is starting to sound like the first year of the Obama Adminstration. They have their own version of fixing the economy, winning a war, and giving everybody health insurance -- it's beating Cisco with 3Com and then conquering the mobile-phone market with today's announcement that they'll buy Palm for $1.2B. Is HP biting off more than they can chew? Can't say we were right about Palm, or were we? HP did the deal at $1.2B. It surprises me. My premise was that paying over $1B for a company that is losing money and market share, with a negative book value, and $400B in debt is just slightly nutty, but what do we know. Apparently the HP CFO knows more than me.

Research firm Broadpoint AmTech, which has been on top of the solid rally in specialty chipmakers, yesterday raised its earnings estimates and price target for Omnivision (OVTI), a chipmaker that specializes in imaging silicon for applications such as cameras in mobile phones. OVTI, a favorite of the momentum investing crowd, had huge moves from 2002-2006, but then stumbled badly in 2008. Broadpoint AmTech analyst Doug Freedman seems believes it will rally on faster-than-expected earnings growth tied to smartphone growth and other markets driving the adoption of Omnivision's imaging technology. The favorite speculation among investors now is whether it will gain entry into Apple's i-Business. It could also ride the wave of growth of cameras and imaging technology in smartphones in general.

LAS VEGAS -- Demonstrating HP's feisty attitude in its escalating networking row with Cisco, HP Network Chief Technologist Paul Congdon attacked Cisco's dominant position in the networking business, saying it is leading to "crazy behavior" and overpriced products. At the top of Congdon's  list of industry problems? "Lack of Competition." This is leading to "crazy behavior... causing you to pay too much for your networking equipment," said Congdon, on a panel titled " Why Networking Must Change," Congdon did not name Cisco by name. But it was clear who it was when he remarked that "In most industries, the market share is separated by 10 percentage points..." Take a look at the chart below and conclude what you may. Congdon's solution for customers? "Open up and write your own RFPs." More standardization would help too. But Congdon's contribution wasn't all Cisco bashing. He also had a  list of trends for the industry. Other than "Cisco Charges Too Much," Here are the rest... * Growing complexity in networks is breeding inefficiency * Massive growth in Internet- connected devices, projecting to 20 million new video-enabled mobile devices in 2010 alone * Scaleability requiring more networking intelligence on the edge of networks * Applications need to be dynamically adaptable to the network, rather than vice-versa Did Cisco respond? Not really. Thomas Scheibe, Director of Data Center Switching, the Cisco representative on the panel, remained civil -- and boring. He kept to a script that involved heap of Layer 2 switch fabrics, mobility, and virtualization. Congdon's got a point -- though it's not really clear how easily HP or anybody else can do anything about it. Networking upstarts have been trying to create "best-of-breed" products with more aggressive price/performance technology to take on Cisco -- and not making a lot of progress. See the chart below. Doug Gourlay, VP of Marketing from Arista Networks, took another jab at Cisco: "Many of the incumbents have used switching and routing technologies as cash cows to  fund entrance into marketing adjacencies to bring us wonderful technologies such as Flip cams." That drew laughter from the audience, which then went back to taking notes on future data-center virtualization.