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HP Pondering Sale of WebOS
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters reports HP is seeking to sell WebOS, at the bidding of its financial advisers. Sounds like open sourcing it is off the table. From the article: 'HP is trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, viewed by many analysts and investors as an expensive foray into the smartphone market that has not paid off. Several technology companies have expressed an interest in buying the division, which is seen as attractive for its patents, the sources said. Amazon.com Inc, Research In Motion, IBM, Oracle Corp and Intel Corp are considered to be among the companies likely to be interested in the asset, industry sources said.'"
Sell it to RIM!
Trolling is a art,
I can't see what Amazon would do with it. They're heavily invested in Android now with their existing devices and Android App Store.
Talk about a disaster. Again.
Where's it going to stop? Oracle hiring Linus? :)
Amazon is already heavily customizing Android to the point where they are kind of diverging from the mainstream - they may as well go further and add in some WebOS ideas into the system. I think it could be a great match. They would have the most unique Android tablet by far, which they are already a good ways along with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I personally have found webOS to be the best one. I think webOS has suffered because of poor hardware not because there is anything wrong with the OS. Bought a touchpad during the firesale and really enjoy using it, only complaint is the obvious lack of apps.
I'd assume they would be interested in the Palm patents.
If they blend the best of Maemo, Meego, Tizen, Symbian and WebOS, all laced with Qt, they could get an ecosystem. Too bad is located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, where only strange creatures lives in. They still have a chance before Microsoft curse finish to kill them.
I have a Pre and Touchpad, because of webOS. My Pre died pre-maturely *yup, thanks* and I replaced it, with a Pre. I've had the old Windows Mobile, Palm OS, proprietary systems, Android, and iOS. Palm/HP hardware sucks, but the OS is the sweetest ever. Intuitive, smooth multitasking, just gorgeous. To lose it would be a shame, especially if the alternative is iOS. Inelegant by comparison. Yes I know, a gillion apps. Same for Android.
At this point, exactly how many developers or software engineers does HP have left in its WebOS department? Probably not many. If they sell it now, it'll basically be just a pile of source code, not an intact team that's experienced with it and can do something with it. This is something these stupid corporations never seem to understand: that the real value is not just in some product, but having an engineering team behind it that has years of experience developing it, and knows how to use it and modify it for customer needs. It's not easy putting together a competent team from scratch, and even if you do manage to get good people, it takes a long time for them to come up to speed, especially if there's no other experts around they can talk to.
"Several technology companies have expressed an interest in buying the division, which is seen as attractive for its patents."
Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.
I think the answer you are looking for is there in the summary. They would want the patents. Maybe some things in android could be improved with those patents?
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
A better question - what sort of idiot would BUY WebOS off of HP at this point? It's basically a dead product, with no usable lifespan left.
The current HP CEO has been in her job for weeks. It'd make more sense to wait and see what the next one thinks.
Not only HP - clearly the analysts and investors have no clue either. A large acquisition hasn't had a positive ROI in the first 6 months of the deal? Shocking! Burn everything, and start from scratch!
Sometimes I think that Ellison and Jobs were successful BECAUSE they are/were assholes. They have a vision and relentlessly execute it; screw everyone else. Anybody who spends time listening to everybody around them and taking their opinions into account will be driven insane and into bankruptcy.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Sounds like open sourcing it is off the table."
It's like Deja vu all over again.
Go Meg, Go!
Ah gotcha, I'm sure you're right... if even just as defensive patents.
Well sure, buying a company for its smartphone and then never actually releasing a phone with those assets is an expensive foray with little payout. Maybe if they'd actually put out a product before the Pre enthusiasts drifted off to other platforms, they'd have done better. I was very disappointed when I had to give up my Pre because I realized the Pre 3 was nowhere on the horizon.
This is starting to get old - hp is doing this, now they're not, then again, but wait, but no.
C'mon, make a decision!
I'm guessing what makes it attractive are the patents. Perhaps Google would buy it for that reason?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Seriously, did they really think Palm wasn't going to fail? What on earth were they thinking? Has Palm ever done an OS correctly? EVER? Lets see, their competitors were Apple, which has been lauded as the most user friendly in every type of OS they've ever produced... Google, who doesn't seem to be able to write anything that geeks don't love... and Microsoft... ok, maybe they could steal all 25 of Microsoft's mobile customers. Good Business decision HP... oh wait, I forgot, HP makes all their money off of printer ink.
IBM is emphatically NOT an end-user-focused company. They explicitly fled away from that market years ago. What on earth would they do with WebOS that couldn't be done easier and cheaper with some other OS?
Sometimes I think that Ellison and Jobs were successful BECAUSE they are/were assholes. They have a vision and relentlessly execute it; screw everyone else.
One could say that about Darth Vader.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
IBM will buy it for sure. After rebrand, it will be called... wait for it... WebOS/2!
Considering how much more advanced multitasking is in WebOS than Android, I REALLY hope Google buys it, this is what they need to make Android feel more polished than iOS
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
It will be the year of WebOS on the something-top!
I'd buy it.
$5. Take it leave it HP.
IBM generally sells business solutions and technology - the latter sometimes as patent licenses, sometimes developing products and selling them off. For example, the popular "swiping" method of keyboard entry on smartphones came from ""ShapeWriter" (previously SHARK), an IBM product they sold to another company to commercialise.
I'm sure there are a lot of assets in WebOS that could be developed. For example, what if you go a step beyond Apple's Siri, and integrate a smartphone interface with the deep AI of IBM's Watson Jeopardy champion (currently being commercialised for optimising medical treatment in the health insurance industry)? Sell or license that product to application developers for everything from intelligent tourist guides to on site first aid agents, who sell their wares on Android, iTunes, Blackberry or Microsoft app stores.
Lots of possibilities for a firm with cutting edge research and development. Like HP used to be, once.
I offer $7.50 Canadian.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Its lifespan is only defined by the products that run it. It is a good, solid mobile OS that languished without the marketing hype it needed. It's the best product that nobody considered buying. For the record, when I had the choice between the Motorola Droid and the Palm Pre Plus, I chose the latter. WebOS has the better interface. Now, when I replace my smartphone, I'll be going with an Android phone since there are no new WebOS devices.
I've heard that both of the people who use WebOS are very happy. Keep it alive!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I would love to run HP and do a 'second coming Steve Jobs' on it.
Jonathanjk.com
I've always thought that WebOS was great, it just needs a little fine tuning and a little ecosystem of services to support it. Why not bring in a few really talented, creative people who can refine the user experience and help develop the platform a bit, then get it in the hands of people at a fair price point. It's really one of the better operating systems out there, and the fact that they have it and don't know what to do with it implies terrible things for HP.
In the same vein why would RIM want WebOS when they already have QNX? Or Amazon with the Kindle's OS / Android already developed.
Oracle doesn't have much to do with tablets and already have Solaris. And I don't see why Intel would want an OS and if they did being designed for a tablet using their competitor's Quallcomm uprocessors on it, might not especially help.
Really, if this is the list of potential buyers... they probably don't have a good chance for selling it. Sorry guys, but hopefully you've updated your resumes recently...
"I offer $7.50 Canadian."
That's like $25 USD! You're a madman to offer that much!
Its insanity! Insanity!
I'll bid $100NZ if they throw in a Touchpad
Been in a coma for the past 9 years, have we?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Well, anyone looking to enter the tablet market w/ new tablets would do well to buy this from HP, rather than develop their own. Unless, like HP, they think that making Windows 8 tablets is a better idea.
> Considering how much more advanced multitasking is in WebOS than Android,
I have read that a few times, but what does it mean? Android multitasks just fine, since a very early version.
The task switcher of WebOS looks better, that's true. You can stop programs (Android does that "automatically"). But apart from that it is not necessarily more functional.
> The HP board are not visionaries, technologist, or engineers.
Well, HP had an engineer as a CEO. And although he made far fewer mistakes than the CEO before him, he didn't really do all that well either.
and none of that needs webos.
they can hack linux and sdl together themself.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The people who have actually used it, myself included find the UI very good indeed.
Nobody is suing about it.
For a tablet/smartphone manufacturer, having a superior UI backed with lawsuit-proof code is the way out of the legal clusterfuck involving Apple, Google, and even Micro$oft . . . which appear to have collectively concluded that since they can't compete on superior technology, that their road to future growth is to sue its competing OSs out of existence.
Personally, I hope Apple and Google and Microsoft succeed in blowing each other out of the mobile market.
Tech Public Policy stuff
haven't palm diluted them by already selling an os out twice?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
IBM might be in for the patent.
On the other hand, as they are more open-source friendly, and don't really need a phone/tablet GUI right now, maybe they'll open-source the closed source part of the code.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Apple. Honestly wouldn't shock me if they did.
Now what HP should be doing is taking their Web-OS tablet and ensure that their full range of corporate applications are streamlined to work on the WebOS. In actual fact, i'd take that WebOS tablet and streamline it in almost every manner specifically to be the preferred enterprise application tablet as opposed to a consumer tablet.
Exactly what the above means.... corporate remote manageability, good development environment, fantastic barcode and scanner device integration, extra durable, extended battery life, great out of the box adapters for their corporate applications, etc.
With their focus on HTML5 apps we have started entering into the trusted computing phase of life.
I already trust my iPad more for online banking than my Windows 7 PC. Why - its obvious, the ipad doesnt have viruses and can therefore be considered secure.
Trusted computing has soo many advantages to society yet in the hands of the wolves it has many disadvantages too.
-Tim
An all-hands-on-deck meeting just to hear Meg Whitman recite her version of Hamlet's soliliquiy? Leo Apotheker must be cackling loudly while counting his golden parachute lucre.
However, this sordid affair does prove there is no afterlife, as evidenced by the fact neither Hewlett nor Packard have come back to strangle everyone at HP HQ that's wearing a suit.
Sometimes I think that Ellison and Jobs were successful BECAUSE they are/were assholes
That is hardly news. People who define success purely by how much money they make are universally assholes.
There are far more important measures of success than wealth. For fuck's sake, Donald Trump and George W Bush are rich, and they're practically retards.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It is more functional for the typical smartphone user, as it is much easier (and more intuitive) to do. Sure, anyone that can learn can learn to do it the way Android does it, but the way WebOS multitasks is the way iOS would if it could multitask (well). It just works.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
I believe the bank and/or Merrill Lynch also stand to reap a commission ($ millions) if HP actually does execute a sale of WebOS. I know, it's insane, but NYT ran a recent story that several HP acquisitions were completed under advice from teams like this that also participated in the sale/transfer and got huge commissions for that turnover.
Another argument against the efficiency of private business.
Why would HP sell WebOS? We are clearly moving to thin devices so it would seem WebOS is a key asset to lever.
I would ideally want WebOS to go open source. It seems that's not going to happen. What about selling it to RIM? They have decent hardware ( the PlayBook comes to mind) - with webOS they'll have decent software as well. They should stop spending time on the Android emulator. ( As BB tablet owner how would you feel running ( sometimes crappy ) Android software on an emulator? ) Their current generation of phones are (theoretically ) capable of running WebOS as is the Playbook. Dear RIM, please pay and buy WebOS. You are not paying for a good OS. You're paying to have a future in the market.