HP announced its purchase of Palm today for $1.2 billion.

This makes sense on a number of levels: HP knows about making good hardware. Palm’s strength is clearly in its operating system, the Web OS. I expect we’ll be seeing HP netbooks and even smart phones within 6 months running the Web OS.

HP also has a marketing budget Palm can only dream about.

But is HP a good marketer?

Quick: Tell me what’s great about HP devices?

People can quickly answer this question about products from companies that market well: Apple, Google, RIM, Flip (now Cisco).

But they couldn’t tell you much about HP devices except that they make computers that run Windows.

That’s a marketing deficit.

Will HP help Palm reach consumers? Clearly.

Because it will simply install Palm’s OS onto its hardware.

But not because HP is an excellent marketer.