HP PC Boss: Shutting down of WebOS is “unfounded rumor”

http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/29/hp-pc-boss-shutting-down-webos-is-unfounded-rumor/

by evo_9 • 15 years ago

46 17 15 years ago

bluemoon• 15 years ago

It seems like they up and changed their mind about it, but then again it could truly be an unfounded rumor

veemjeem• 15 years ago

If so, they'll need to rehire all those people that left the company a few months ago. A friend of mine who worked on the stylus interface left a month ago, and I doubt he'd return.

ra• 15 years ago

I truly hope WebOS, or at least enyo, has a bright future somewhere.

bstar77• 15 years ago

I think the reality is, they don't know what the hell to do with webos. In owning a touchpad myself, I see a bit of the reality distortion effect that affects all of us webos users. Webos succeeds in the emotional attachment, but fails in just about everything else. I love this thing so much, but it really sucks when you compare it to an iPad, or even an android tablet.

Hp made the best decision by going with windows8 moving forward. Ms has a much better tablet foundation with metro and will have the resources to make sure win8 will be a success. Webos has no hope, I'm sad to say. I think the best thing to happen for us consumers is to see webos open sourced and see what the community does with it.

I'm curious to see what Whitman decides... I bet she gets sucked into this vocal, but minority webs support group and drops more resources on this dead platform. Don't envy HPs situation.

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

i thought it already was open source?

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Not the fun parts.

hieronymusN• 15 years ago

I just switched from a 1st gen Palm Pre to my first iPhone 4S and I cannot agree more with this statement. webOS has a great UI, but it lost all the important battles (app ecosystem, quality hardware to run on, etc). iOS is now picking up a lot of webOS goodness (notifications) and the app ecosystem that Apple has is just... mindblowing. John Siracusa, in his Hypercritical podcast, made a great case for Amazon picking up webOS for use on their new tablets, but that horse has already left the stable with Android.

duskwuff• 15 years ago

Seeing as how HP no longer has any devices for sale which use WebOS, the shutdown of the WebOS unit seems like a foregone conclusion at this point.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

If they are actively seeking a sale of the platform, any idea how much they'd want for it? They spent billions on the acquisition of Palm, and somehow I doubt they'll even be able to sell a dying platform.

mmahemoff• 15 years ago

Whatever the patents are worth.

Most journalists, forget webOS integrated Node before most people had even heard of it. The platform has so much potential. If they'd given away devices to developers instead of announcing the platform's demise and giving devices away anyway, it still stood some chance. But now it's been well and truly buried by HP.

cpeterso• 15 years ago

Does HP actually own Palm's patents? Reading Wikipedia's description of Palm's IP changing hands feels like watching a game of Three-card Monte.

After Palm split its hardware and software divisions into the palmOne and PalmSource companies, Japanese company ACCESS acquired PalmSource. Wikipedia says that palmOne later paid ACCESS $44M for the rights to the source code for Palm OS Garnet and that Palm could "modify the licensed software as needed and did not need to pay royalties to ACCESS." So who owns which Palm patents?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmOne#PalmOne

This Engadget article from October 2010 (after HP acquired Palm in July 2010) says that ACCESS licensed some PalmSource patents to Microsoft. That suggests that ACCESS still has (some?) Palm patents.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/08/microsoft-licenses-dozens...

shareme• 15 years ago

hmm 75% of webOS engineering staff left HP, I do no think the choice is up to them anymore

daimyoyo• 15 years ago

I know Amazon spent a lot of money to develop the Andriod skin they are going to use in the Fire, but I think they should buy webOS. That way they can build the same ecosystem Apple has. If they had their own OS no one else could use, and customers with credit card numbers on file, they could get the same seamless experience that Apple used to capture the tablet market. Also, I think they should sell them at to loss to build a userbase since they'll make a lot of money when customers load the tablet up with content.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Android is Apache licensed, Amazon won't have to share any of their custom code.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

If nobody makes WebOS devices, is the division really operating?

anonymous666• 15 years ago

If it's an "unfounded rumor", why does HP has cancelled some external projects working with WebOS ?

eli• 15 years ago

It may be a rumor. It may even be false. But it is not unfounded.

HP PC Boss: Shutting down of WebOS is “unfounded rumor”

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