HP deciding fate of webOS, Palm this week
Over the summer, HP killed off its webOS division. It sent shockwaves throughout much of the mobile industry, since webOS was once owned by Palm, which HP had purchased earlier in the year for $1.2 billion.
As we all know, there have been some serious problems involving HP over the year of 2011, including the firing of Leo Apotheker. Meg Whitman took his place, and after she did that, she said that she would be thinking long and hard about what to do with webOS software and hardware. She told us to expect an answer soon, and it seems like HP's finally decided what to do.
Tomorrow, there will be an all-hands meeting discussing what's going to happen with it, with HP making clear exactly what has happened since the decision and what's going to happen in the future. Whether it's killed off forever or licensed to partners or even sold to a competitor, you can bet any amount of money that there will be a decision made tomorrow.
If the meeting is just an attempt by Whitman to buy some time for her decision, then she and HP have completely screwed themselves over by waiting too long to decide how they're going to stay in/get out of the mobile market.
Selling webOS as it is right now will disappoint buyers because it hasn't been updated in a while, and those buyers might not want to throw in the resources and money it will take to become a viable option for consumers again. The same thing is true with licensing it; HP obviously doesn't see webOS as the most important product in the world, so why should partners?
Would you like to see webOS again? I know I would.
[AppleInsider]
