HP Still Believes in webOS, Takes Apple Approach to Hardware & Software
Hewlett-Packard is currently reshaping itself into a more software-oriented company. Speaking at the D9 conference today, chief executive Leo Apotheker offered a glimpse into HP’s plans for webOS. It seems to be following the same course Apple is – providing full-bundle consumer products, including hardware and software – an end-to-end ecosystem.
“We want to create a holistic ecoystem around webOS,” Apotheker said. “We’re putting it on phones, on our TouchPad tablet which will debut as scheduled this summer. And we’ll put webOS on PCs….It will go on every PC that we’ll ship.”
WebOS has distinct cloud aspect. This, based on what’ve learned today, will also encompass PCs, and a lot of them, considering HP is currently the single largest computer manufacturer in the world. This also raises the question of whether or not webOS will one day replace Windows on some or all Hewlett-Packard devices. Apotheker addressed this, saying that:
“In the beginning, webOS will sit on top of Windows, but the intention is to get it out there on every PC.”
Deeper into his keynote at D9, the HP head also said his company may have wider plans to license the mobile platform to other companies, and did not decline that HTC could be one of the first ones to get into the wait list. “It’s not correct to believe that it should only be on HP devices,” he said, citing webOS’s widely recognized strong capabilities.
HP is leaning more and more towards software, but is still very consistent when it comes to hardware pushes. The latest one was in Memorial Day, when it (and competitor Dell) offered entire line-ups of product deals to attract buyers.
Looking at some other companies operating in the mobile industry, Google unveiled its NFC mobile wallet service for Android.
image credit: Business Insider
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