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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.'"
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 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.
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There's a lot of nifty design choices that I really like in WebOS, more so than in Android if I'm being honest. Snatch it up, open source the code, keep the patents in reserve for the next round of the patent wars, and give Android a bit of a face lift. Seems like a wining formula to me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's see, when Palm was first starting out, their competition was Apple in the form of the Apple Newton... I remember how the Newton flew off the shelves... oh wait... no they didn't... Palm PDAs were flying off the shelves. In fact, Palm's OS was put into a smartphone an entire DECADE before Apple got into the market. Then came Windows CE, which actually was competition for Palm. The original developers for Palm split off into their own company called Handspring, which produced the Treo (which first ran Palm's OS). Palm acquired Handspring, and for some strange reason, switched the Treo to run Windows Mobile. ALL of this happened before Apple and Google entered the smartphone market.
webOS is actually an excellent operating system. I was a huge Android fan until I got my TouchPad. I bought it with the intention of scrubbing webOS and throwing on Android as soon as a port was available. After using it for a while, I realized how good webOS is and that moving to Android would be a downgrade. The only major problem with webOS is the lack of apps.