HP Pondering Sale of WebOS 99
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.'"
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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.
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> 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.
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I'd buy it.
$5. Take it leave it HP.
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I offer $7.50 Canadian.
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"I offer $7.50 Canadian."
That's like $25 USD! You're a madman to offer that much!
Its insanity! Insanity!
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I'll bid $100NZ if they throw in a Touchpad
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Been in a coma for the past 9 years [exchangerate.com], have we?
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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.
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Re:WTH HP (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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. [geekwire.com]
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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.
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It will be the year of WebOS on the something-top!
Well... (Score:1)
Sell it to RIM!
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QNX > WebOS
Unless RIM sells QNX to someone who can do something with it.
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Amazon? Why? (Score:2)
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Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.
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Oh man *please* don't let it be Oracle... (Score:2)
Talk about a disaster. Again.
Where's it going to stop? Oracle hiring Linus? :)
Amazon the best match (Score:3)
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.
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Amazon though has an Amazon specific app store, and a lot better ability to provide content well-integrated with the device. That's why all around I think Android has the highest chance of success at a non-iPad tablet, WebOS or no... but WebOS would make it even better.
of all the mobile OS's (Score:2)
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For me though it's less about apps or performance than about the web browser. The WebOS browser didn't work correctly with a number of sites that I frequent (with Slashdot being one of them), while the Android browser is pretty solid.
I think that WebOS showed a lot of promise and with a little more support it could have grown into a great OS. Brows
Surprised Google isn't mentioned (Score:2)
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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.
Nokia (Score:2)
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Nokia already had this hands full trying to convince his developers to stay around (I'm not saying they aren't managing to get it, just that they are pretty busy doing that).
With Symbian going down, the WP7 entry point and Linux going up (as Nokia recently stated [slashdot.org]), I don't think Nokia has any momentum to spare trying to push WebOS on their software pipelines.
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> If they blend the best of Maemo, Meego, Tizen, Symbian and WebOS, all laced with Qt
The question is: why would you want to blend together all the approaches that failed in the mobile space? Maemo clearly had potential, but it failed to attract any customers.
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No, Meego-partner Intel should buy WebOS and use what it can to prop up Meego, to replace what Nokia dropped. Intel should also support the Qt development environment, for all the same reasons.
I could see Intel distributing/supporting Meego on various phones/tablets/netbooks in this regard and enjoying similar success, just as Google has done.
The only reason Intel wouldn't do that would be not to piss off Microsoft, but Microsoft is less relevant in the mobile space and Intel wants to be there. Hey, its alm
Just don't let a good thing die! (Score:3, Informative)
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one thing that pissed me off about webos - when you select text that is larger than the text box.. how the hell do you scroll back to the left??
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yeah, some arrow keys would be nice... anyone know how to make that happen?
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Yes, but Android 2.3 has a much better solution for that. (Android 2.2 sucked in pretty similar ways.)
Cursor keys would have been another option, but I find that this works pretty nicely for me.
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I certainly do not find WebOS "intuitive". What's with all this swiping the screen to make a "deck"? Why the hell do I have to swipe the deck off of the top of the screen to close it? How, in all that is holy, is that "intuitive"? Why can I never find the fucking settings the one time I need it every month or so
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Why the hell do I have to swipe the deck off of the top of the screen to close it? How, in all that is holy, is that "intuitive"?
I'm always careful of using the word intuitive about any UI, but it seemed natural to me. I didn't read any documentation about WebOS before using it, and flicking a card away from the top of the deck to get rid of it seemed like the obvious way of getting rid of it.
Will it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Are they? Are you sure? I have a hard time believing none of them have left for better jobs after hearing their project was being shitcanned. You seem to be assuming that employment is a one-sided affair, and that employees can only leave a job if the company lays them off.
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Exactly my thoughts. Anyone who buys that team will be left with the lesser performers, the ones who weren't able to quickly jump ship to someplace better. The top people will all have taken off.
Time for a change (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would love to run HP and do a 'second coming Steve Jobs' on it.
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> 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.
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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
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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.
HP OpenMail (Score:1)
It's like Deja vu all over again.
Buy high, sell low. (Score:2)
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I find that "buy low, sell high" works much better for me.
expensive foray (Score:3)
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.
Shit or get off the pot (Score:1)
C'mon, make a decision!
Morons (Score:2)
Re:Morons (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Hmm, I always felt like Palm's first OS was just MacOS (pre-OSX) rebranded into a portable format. Everything from the fonts to the icons to the dialog boxes looked the same. I mean, you couldn't move the icons or resize the windows, but that was about it. It even felt like MacOS at
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Who knows. Android was around in 2007 as well, but it looked nothing like the Android we know today. Had it shipped in that state, it would have failed catastrophically.
Maybe WebOS was all brushed up and ready to go, but it's telling that they couldn't push a device for nearly two years after the iPhone. That's half a device lifecycle.
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IBM? Huh? (Score:2)
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?
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IBM will buy it for sure. After rebrand, it will be called... wait for it... WebOS/2!
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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
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and none of that needs webos.
they can hack linux and sdl together themself.
Re:IBM? Huh? or anyone? (Score:2)
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
For the Patent (Score:2)
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.
Much Loved By Users! (Score:2)
I've heard that both of the people who use WebOS are very happy. Keep it alive!
Why not develop it further? (Score:1)
Palm patents too?, without which webOS is useless (Score:1)
If some random company buys webOS *without* Palm's IP/patents, they would be sued the second they actually used it in a product. These days, if you don't have a decent patent warchest, it doesn't matter how good your product or software is... webOS is a useless asset without the patents, either Palm's or already owning a similar rich set already.
For those that realize this, the list of possible buyers now becomes much, much smaller...
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haven't palm diluted them by already selling an os out twice?
what's good about WebOS? (Score:2)
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
Pathetic (Score:2)
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.
Sell? (Score:1)
Sell it to RIM? (Score:1)