Hewlett-Packard’s move to open-source webOS may have been the best route to avoid the Palm acquisition from being written down in the history pages as a complete blunder. Now the company can refocus on monetizing its ecosystem, which will – hopefully – help flesh out the platform as it grows. SiliconANGLE Founder John Furrier discussed the scoop and the announcement by Meg Whiteman on our blog.

The now open-source webOS suddenly received a chance to stand a fight against Windows Phone 7 and even Apple.  It wasn’t altogether clear, however, what HP plans to do with it, though that’s changing as more details come from the company.

Klint Finley interviewed two unnamed executives who revealed an entirely new route HP may embark on. The vision involves the transformation of webOS into something between a high-end HTML5 browser and an added app layer on mobile devices that sits on top of an OS such as Android. There’s at least one strong reason  why this approach may just work out.

“It’s also possible that Enyo is the real play here, and that webOS itself (and its critically acclaimed user interface) will become less relevant. Enyo apps can theoretically run in any WebKit browser, but the license for Enyo forbids using it for anything other than webOS apps.”

It seems as if Hewlett-Packard expanded its plans for webOS quite drastically.  Chief executive Meg Whiteman said in an interview that there’s a likelihood her company will come out with a webOS tablet sometime in the future, though the same can’t be said of a handset.  This confirms some of Bert Latamore’s own speculations about the prospect of a webOS tablet comeback, as well as the improbability of HP taking another jab at the mobile market with a smartphone.  There’s still no word on whether or not they’ll be reassembling their in-house development team.