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HTC Considering Buying Own OS

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-got-to-feed-it-and-let-it-outside dept.

An anonymous reader writes "HTC Corp chairwoman Cher Wang announced that the company is interested in buying an operating system. From the article: 'After the global PC heavyweight Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) announced on Aug. 18 a plan to spin off its PC business and stop sales of its TouchPad tablet that uses the WebOS operating system, a slew of manufacturers like HTC and Samsung reportedly have been trying to acquire the WebOS platform to expand their mobile market reach. 'We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse,' Wang said in an interview with the Economic Observer of China.'"

11 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Out of their minds? by Ezel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So they don't realize that they have their position in the cellphone-market BECAUSE they use Android insted of IN SPITE of it?

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    Prosp long and liver.
    1. Re:Out of their minds? by am+2k · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, but you can't measure "good UI" in an Excel diagram, thus that's outside the thought space of CEOs.

    2. Re:Out of their minds? by neokushan · · Score: 5, Informative

      HTC has access to the Honeycomb source code, just like many other manufacturers, meaning it's a non-issue for them.
      Just because it's not on the AOSP doesn't mean that vendors don't have it.

      Unless you're specifically referring to Ice Cream Sandwich, in which case this is no different to ANY other version of Android, whereby a select group got access first, then everyone else. Besides, HTC has done a lot (more than most) to differentiate themselves from other Manufacturers, with Sense.

      What I think most people miss is that HTC don't just make Android phone. They also make Windows Phones and (for some reason known only to them) Brew phones. What's the big deal with having another OS they can peddle, something that they can make entirely theirs? Samsung has Bada, yet they're still doing pretty well with Android, so it can be done.

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    3. Re:Out of their minds? by am+2k · · Score: 3

      You know, this seems like the standard corporate-bashing, 'you're not an IT-guy like me, you'll never 'get it', knee-jerk response...

      Oh, but most IT-guys don't get it either. Computing has become mainstream, and it's hard to give up old thinking constructs (like more features being better unconditionally).

  2. Re:Bad plan by garcia · · Score: 3

    Because they don't like Google and its policies? Android is great but that's because it has an app store that goes along with it. People want apps, lots of them but companies don't want Google to come along with the deal.

    By rolling their own version of Android it's unlikely they'll be in with the Android app store and it would be just as useless as having WebOS (or any other OS "worth little or nothing").

  3. Re:TRON? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But the US is no longer an important part of the phone industry, y'know

    What do you mean 'no longer?' The US has never been an important part of the phone industry, from the perspective of handset makers. They don't sell phones to customers, they sell them to networks, who demand a low price and will only bundle phones with the really expensive contracts with a 20% APR loan hidden in the details if they don't get a very low price. Then they'll try to rip out all of the best features of the phone, leaving them network-branded devices, with most of the uniqueness gone.

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  4. Lots of OSes to pick by Henriok · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are several cool zombie like OS:es that is ripe for resurrection: AmigaOS, MorphOS, Plan 9 and Haiku. One could even put an OpenStep foundation on top of any of these or something more conventional OS like Linux or xBSD and tap some similarities with iOS.

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    - Henrik

    - when the Shadows descend -
  5. Ahh WebOS by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    WebOS is one of those mobile OS's that reminds me of BeOS. The techies love it. But fails to get a strong customer base.

    I think it was mostly due with Palms hacking WebOS to in essence Hack into iTunes to gets its media (for iPod Support) causing its main competitor Apple to keep changing their method to block WebOS, from accessing its system without Apples permission.
    So Early Adopters would have shaky Music support where it is supported one day then the next it will stop then they will have 2 week later they will have it again then stop. Granted I don't approve of Apple locking down iTunes to only Apple devices, however Palm just ignoring Apples policies just because they don't like them isn't good enough, and ends up hurting their customers more then just saying we don't support iTunes but they these other popular services.
    In the mean time while Palm is fighting it gave Android the time to perfect its system and get it out, without all the baggage that Palm has made for itself.

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  6. They already have one.. by Dynamoo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    They already have one.. sort of. They've got an environment running on BREW called HTC Sense (they use that name for a lot of things). You can find it in the HTC Smart released last year. And what happened to the Smart? It sank without trace.

    Although.. I bought an HP TouchPad in the firesale intending to move it to Android from webOS, but actually it's a nice OS (although it has its limits). There's already an application library for it, not huge, but a good start. It would be a shame to see webOS vanish completely..

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  7. A Phone and Android is not enough by ControlsGeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A Phone and Android is not enough these days. In order to compete you need a network, an Application store and a stream of income that develops from that. Google sucks up all the added value from Android.

  8. Re:Bad plan by MrHanky · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People want apps only because of the extra functionality (and entertainment, in the case of games). Android isn't great, it's merely good enough, and what makes it good enough isn't the enormous amount of apps you can download, it's the fact that you usually don't need them due to the excellent Google integration. Android without Google would be fairly shit, for a Linux OS.