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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.'"
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.
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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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.