Samsung is not a M&A company. That really hurts the chances of this happening even if there are forces within Samsung and HP pushing for it. The top management is skeptical of successful mergers, and at a tightly controlled company such as Samsung that makes a big difference.

I still contend the best buyer of webOS would be Google. The patents are gold, the price is probably right, it eliminates the possibility of a partner turning into a competitor, and the talent would integrate easily. Everyone's already in the valley. Just shut down webOS for good, put the developers on Android or ChromeOS, and tell consumers to look forward to great webOS features making it into future Android and ChromeOS releases.