WebOS fate will be decided in 2 Weeks: HP

HP bought Palm in 2010 for whooping $1.2 billion and release HP Touchpad tablet and HP Veer mini phone during first half of this year. During the CES of this year, most of the media and tech pundits were thinking that HP could give Apple a competition in Tablet market because of webOS. But the great expectations were failed shortly after the release of the Touchpad in July and HP pulled the plugs killed the hardware side of the shop, Palm,  immediately. Also they were in a dilemma whether to continue PC side of the house, spin it as a separate company or sell it totally like IBM did.

Immediately after that, the then CEO of HP, Leo Apotheker was let go by the board and eBay’s ex CEO Meg Whitman was called in for top executive position. Media was expecting HP would not release Microsoft Windows based Tablets when HP acquired webOS and HP also gave a lot of hints about itself positioning as webOS based platform maker that includes PCs, Printers in addition to mobile devices such as Tablets, and Smartphones. Also media thought HP would kill HP Slate (Windows 7 based Tablet), and of course HP didn’t kill it totally, but literally slowed the production to almost zero. And after Meg Whitman’s takeover HP leadership, they announced HP would keep PC side of the house and continue producing PCs and Printers and indeed release Windows 8 based PC and Tablets once that OS is released by Microsoft for OEMs. She also announced that they would take a decision pretty soon about webOS platform. As per the interview that HP CEO Meg Whitman gave to French newspaper Le Figaro, she stated that a decision regarding the fate of webOS will be made in two weeks. Let us see whether HP would hold onto webOS to use it in its products such as printers, sell it off, or license the OS to makers to recoup the investment it made on the acquisition, R&D, and production of now dead Touchpads, and phones.

Via: BGR
Source: Le Figaro (Translated)