Third time’s a charm?
HP CEO Meg Whitman believes that webOS can still triumph over the “fragmented” Android and the “closed” iOS but she remained vague about what role the platform will play for HP moving forward.
WebOS’ story is one of unfulfilled potential, as it debuted with Palm a few years ago during CES with a lot of fanfare. It launched with the Palm Pre but couldn’t really carve out a significant market share against the iPhone 3G and Android. HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion, released a few non-competitive products, decided it didn’t want to be in the webOS business and finally decided to open source the platform.
Whitman remains confident that the open source community can turn webOS into something competitive.
“There is a clear vision of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Whitman said in an interview with CRN. “There will be some people who will not love that vision, and then there are people who are very excited about this vision, and what it can mean for an alternative, open-source operating system that has some real strengths to it.”
Whitman also said that HP has to have a tablet strategy and that it will be coming out with Windows 8 tablets and she previously stated that it will likely bring out another webOS tablet, but probably not until at least 2013. While it’s not yet clear if we’re in the “post-PC era” (or if we’ll ever be), it’s clear that consumers like this form factor. Last quarter, Apple sold more iPad tablets than HP sold traditional computers.
I’ve always felt webOS was a brilliantly-designed operating system and probably the best 1.0 platform we’ve ever seen but it failed to keep up with the Combses. The open source maneuver was the only thing HP could do after squandering nearly $3 billion on webOS, so maybe it truly is time to let it die already.
You can find more information at the via links below, although CRN is being lame by putting the interview into a 14-page slideshow. That’s just weak.