WebOS lives! HP decides to open source the platform
After on-again, off-again news about the webOS mobile platform, HP has come to a final decision: WebOS will be offered to the open source community. HP will still be involved in the platform to help developers and aid in governance for webOS. The choice effectively gives a third life to the platform, first developed by Palm and later purchased by HP.
In a press release sharing the news, HP CEO Meg Whitman touts the mobile platform as robust enough to power future devices:
[W]ebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.
HP spent $1.2 billion to acquire Palm and its webOS resources in April, 2010, but the investment hasn’t paid off. It took more than a year for the company to design and build the HP TouchPad tablet running webOS, which was never considered successful. At least not until the price was drastically reduced to $99 when HP decided to leave the tablet market it only just entered.
With the operating system now to be open sourced, we could see device makers build new phones or tablets with it, as no licensing fee would be required. This is similar to Google Android, but the challenge for webOS is the ecosystem. Android has become the most-used smartphone platform to date and developers are writing apps for it, as well as Apple’s iOS devices. WebOS still has many fans — myself included — but doesn’t have as strong of an ecosystem.
It’s also possible that HP itself could jump back in the mobile hardware game, but of course there are no guarantees. My suspicion is that this scenario would only play out if the open source community gave HP a reason to do so by maturing the platform and third-party software offerings.
Other hardware makers could play a wait-and-see game too, although I’d rule Samsung out as using webOS: The company has quietly developed its own Bada OS, which is gaining an audience and gives Samsung a backup plan for Android. Not that it needs one yet.
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Too little, too late. Some hackers will do builds for devices that they own but no large player is going to grab this and launch a line of devices around it.
HP screwed their chances with WebOS the moment they hired Apotheker who obviously didn’t care for it or the consumer market in general. Instead of launching their phones and tablets and iterating they panicked when it wasn’t an immediate hit and killed the OS. The open sourcing is just a nice afterlife for it, but WebOS doesn’t live. It’s still dead.
Disagree, Apotheker is out, Palm, WebOS are established Oses, with many supporters, I just started using it after I bought a Touchpad on Black Friday, and I am very impressed with it, HP or someone needs to release a 7″ version at $199 or less to spur future sales.
“Many suporters”
Like? Name one hardware vendor that has a WebOS device on the market in any quantity (and no, the fire sale HP stuff doesn’t count as it’s discontinued).
“HP or someone needs to release a 7″ version at $199 or less to spur future sales.”
But they’re not going to. Why would anyone release a new tablet that uses WebOS without a clear design goal? The Nooks and the Kindle Fire both are clearly budget tablets designed specifically around reading and, for the Fire, music and video. General purpose tablets in their price range are nice, but don’t have the obvious ecosystem tie-ins. Above that price range much and tablets have to compete against the iPad which no one has really done.
WebOS is a nice OS. But in practical terms it’s dead. Unless someone pick this up and runs with it hard enough to get some volume, it’s not coming back.
It’s not dead, but it’s not alive either. It’s undead, like a zombie, which is rather interesting, if futile.
@Kevin,
There may be diversification opportunities for smartphone and tablet makers using WebOS. In particular, the low end of the market is still dominated by feature phones in the US and abroad. Robust smartphones that are “internet centric” as opposed to “app centric” may be ideal for low income, emerging markets, and possibly even seniors. Even the prepaid market in the US is ripe here as many prepaid customers use their phones as their primary point of internet access, and WebOS was built primarily for internet usage.
My $.02,
Curtis
That could very well happen Curtis, but I’m not convinced. Why would a handset maker opt for webOS over Android at the same cost? Put another way: you can build a cheap handset with a great browser on either; the widespread app availability (and Google services to boot) come as a bonus. ZTE and Huawei are already building Android smartphones are that are getting closer to feature-phone price points for post- and pre-paid customers for example. It will be interesting to see if you’re right though!
I’d rather see manufacturers like HTC and Samsung try WebOS out as the alternative to Android than WP7. I think they would get significantly more sales, too. Obviously it has no chance to become as popular as Android for those manufacturers, but what they are looking for is just a strong alternative that wouldn’t reduce their sales by 30x if they ever decided to give up on Android.
Being open source means it also has the opportunity to become popular with manufacturers much faster.
Google should put some money into it…as insurance ( and leverage) against Apple and Microsoft.
WebOS is disembodied but not DeadOS! Glad to see that it lives to see another day. It will be be challenging to cultivate a healthy ecosystem of devices and developers around it. Here are some more thoughts on topic: http://bit.ly/uqyubL
At least there will be a real competitor to Android. No competition means no progress..
I always think that WebOS has the potential. It’s just too sad HP didn’t realize it immediately and killed it off by getting its tablet off the market. I also don’t know how it would fare with Android, but I’d rather hold on to my judgment first until I can hear more news about this.