HP Says Farewell to WebOS, Tablets & PCs

Well, There goes any big hopes for WebOS as the next great Mobile Linux disribution... It's a shame, since the TouchPad was supposed to be really sharp, from an Open Source/configurable point of view... I guess all hopes will hang on Meego for that, though...

Don't discount webOS too quickly. The HP announcement was about hardware devices, not the webOS software.

In yesterday's HP conference call to stockholders, they stated that they view webOS as an elegantly designed piece of software and "Developers like it, users like it, and HP will be looking at all possible business models for the future of this software."

If they could do it like Android and license it out, that might work better.

This is the problem with too many competing platforms. How many mobile OSes are there now? iOS, Win*, Android, Meego/Maemo, and WebOS. It's just too many, especially with 3 of those being Linux-based.

HP should have joined Intel and Nokia and what they tried to do with Maemo and Moblin, and merged WebOS into Meego. With 3 big companies all working together on Meego, it'd stand a better chance against Android (which it could also borrow from), and the 2 proprietary ones.

@penguinist is right. According to the Business Wire:

http://fossforce.com/2011/08/hp-says-farewell-to-webos-table...

Quoting:“In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

But that isn't definite either since HP can go back, think about it, and just don't do anything with WebOS. Most Probably, they will sell it if they can find a buyer.

The flash news was unexpected and unusual and, it doesn't seem to be based on business facts. Their WebOS tablet has been out only couple months ago, which is not enough to make a sound business assessment, unless they already known it was a lemon.

In my opinion, this sounds like a political decision. Either upper management decided already that the market for Tablets is already saturated with numerous cheaper competing devices, or someone else made the decision for them. I don't doubt that some body didn't like the idea of having a Linux based OS running on this device instead of its own.

Yeah -- "some" body...

What are the odds? 50-50?

The same somebody who told IBM to quit pushing OS/2 or face paying retail for every copy of the just-released Win95 they sold on a machine, perhaps?

Sorry, but I saw it coming base on how poorly HP made theTouchPad. The OS might had potential, but the execution of the hardware was very poor. The TouchPad was expensive, sluggish performance and I felt they tried a bit to be "Apple" by not including microSD card. Am I correct that this tablet cannot make direct phone calls? I don't know how locked down the device is, but from an outside looker I couldn't find anything enticing about it.

I'm now using Virgin Mobile and the chance of getting a prepaid Meego phone is probably nil, but who knows, I hope there will be at least a second Meego phone to start off.

You'll be able to put Meego on jail broken phone (one of at least several models that users will experiment with),... "some time in the future," at least. So, those desiring Meego just need to get the particular hardware that somebody has already managed to get running... It'll be the same for Meego tablets...

Maybe HP doesn't have a good software portfolio - and they're afraid Apple will add HP to the list HTC/Samsung?

Things are getting simpler now though: Only half-open / closed systems which spy on you will be left. Which is really sad. Hopefully some Chinese company buys WebOS and starts pushing it in China only, because mostly they don't suffer from the lame patent system we have here in the West.