HP’s Uncertain Focus Leaves webOS Adrift
Ever since Hewlett-Packard announced that they will discontinue production of webOS devices, people have been asking, “what will happen to webOS?” Speculations regarding HP’s mobile platform’s future ranged from selling to the highest bidder, but Amazon is the latest possible buyer, as rumors make their rounds in the tech industry. It’s been a winding journey for webOS, which has an uncertain fate as HP struggles to transition a massive shift in industry focus. Whether webOS is to be sold, killed off or reserved for the developer community at large are the riding questions around this regularly resuscitated operating system.
The death rumor came from HP itself when they stated that, “although HP is winding down the device operations of our webOS division by October 31, 2011, we will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software,” on their Q&A webpage addressing the question, “What is the future of webOS?”
Confusion grew during the HP Impact event in Dublin when an HP spokesperson told Pocket-lint that “HP is currently investigating using WebOS on its Designjet range of professional printers.” This could mean that webOS is not dead but will only be found on HP printers.
As for the “for sale” rumor, Samsung was the first to be rumored at buying the Palm division, including the webOS unit. But Samsung has been busy with other OS endeavors, namely Microsoft, Bada and Tizen. HTC was also rumored to be interested in webOS, but they’re not rushing to make or have their own OS as they don’t want to end up like HP.
And the latest to be rumored interested in the webOS is Amazon. Sources say that Amazon is interested in buying webOS so that they would not have to extensively tweak Google’s Android platform for their Kindle tablet. The rumor is based on the fact that former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, also a former Apple iPod chief, is now part of Amazon’s board of directors.
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