HTC Considering Buying Own OS

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.'"

Comments

Out of their minds?

[Ezel]

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

Re:Out of their minds?

[neokushan]

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.

Re:TRON?

[TheRaven64]

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.

Lots of OSes to pick

[Henriok]

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.

Ahh WebOS

[jellomizer]

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.