Well, well, well. It would seem that HP wasn’t kidding around when it coyly said it was open to licensing webOS to third-party manufacturers. Bloomberg interviewed HP CEO Leo Apotheker, and he confirmed that HP is talking to several companies about the possibility of licensing webOS.
“We are talking to a number of companies,” Apotheker told Bloomberg in Beijing, without diving into details, “I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations.”
This Is My Next contacted former Palm CEO, Jon Rubinstein, who is now HP’s top webOS guy, and he confirmed the news – and gave some more details about what, exactly, HP is looking for in a possible licensing partner. The gist? WebOS needs to be the top dog for the hardware maker taking the license.
“If someone wants to really invest, and potentially help develop webOS, we’re interested in talking to them,” Rubinstein said, “If it [webOS] was the primary one they were going to do and they were going to add real value back into the ecosystem, and ‘oh by the way’ they were doing some Android or Microsoft stuff, of course we’d consider it – but if we’re going to be one of 5 or 6 OSs, it’s hard to see – it wouldn’t make any sense.”
According to several sources, Samsung is one of the companies HP is talking to about licensing webOS. Samsung is apparently looking for a platform it can customise in case Google ever decides to lock down Android. Samsung’s Jason Kim denied the last bit about Android – “Samsung will continue to strengthen its relationship with Google to provide ultimate values to customers.” – but did not comment about a potential deal between HP and Samsung.
It will be interesting to see where HP wants to take webOS licensing. I think an Android/WP7 approach would be disastrous to HP’s own webOS hardware business, but I can see a more Microsoft/Nokia-esque relationship with one preferred hardware partner, who will not only build hardware, but will also contribute software expertise and other development resources, work out pretty great.
Samsung seems like a logical choice, since Samsung has a lot of experience with building phones, and has been remarkably successful with its Android devices. At the same time, however, this is a problem; why would Samsung make the switch to webOS as its preferred platform over Android when the latter is currently doing so well?
what about desktop os with webos…it interesting
I love it, when first he says this…
…then mentions Samsung as a potential OEM.
Seriously, I mean, if there’s one schizophrenic company in the mobile space, it’s really Samsung.
They already work with…
* Their in-house OS for low-end classical phones
* A heavily tweaked variant for touchscreens
* An evolution of it, bada, which aims at the mid-end
* Android
* WP7
Sure, there’s a lot of code sharing between the first three (they have at least a kernel in common, even though the bada API may also be implemented on top of Linux), but if there’s only one company where WebOS is guaranteed to be the 5th or 6th OS, it’s Samsung, really… Even HTC deals with less OSs !
At best they will replace WP7 with WebOS, as after the Nokia deal it might sound like a significantly better investment in the “long term future” realm.
Edited 2011-06-30 05:31 UTC
It must be a joke. Hedging to a certain degree might OK, but this is ridiculous.
If Bada also runs on Linux it might make sense, because WebOS, Android and Bada would have a lot of kernel/driver code to share.
If they do this, then they will also release a Meego phone this year 😉 Bet?
To the best of my knowledge, Samsung currently deal with 3.5 kernels : an in-house RTOS, WinCE, Linux and Android
(In my opinion, Android and Linux count as 1.5 as Android diverges from the Linux codebase to a significant extent, although they still have a lot in common)
WebOS wouldn’t add more to that list as it’s Linux-based, on the other hand it would certainly be yet another new userland to support
+1 for the Samsung Meego phone…
Edited 2011-06-30 07:48 UTC
Well, producing Linux based phones doesn’t seem to a problem for Samsung.
They even have Limo phones: http://www.limofoundation.org/solutions/index.php
Regarding Samsung, I had high hopes for Bada, but it seems they have decided to follow the same design decisions that lead to Symbian C++.
http://static.bada.com/contents/tutorials/bada_SDK_1.2.0/badaTutori…
This really kills my appetite to try it out.
At least with WebOS, iOS, Android and WindowsCE one can make proper use of C and C++ language constructs. And who knows, maybe Microsoft will eventually open up WP7 to native as well.
Edited 2011-06-30 08:36 UTC
It’s a nice OS from a user point of view, although as of version 1.1 it still requires a bit more polish to reach maturity. Been using it for a while on the Wave 533 since I decided that Nokia weren’t worth getting my money anymore due to the WP7 deal.
It sure does not attempt to revolutionize mobile computing, but it does its job well, is easy on battery by today’s standards (*sigh*), and doesn’t require ridiculously fast and expensive hardware to work smoothly (only the web browser noticeably screams for more optimization, that hopefully is now fixed or will be fixed in future releases). I still significantly prefer Symbian on touchscreen-free hardware, but apparently I’m a bit alone there
Edited 2011-06-30 08:50 UTC
Samsung is a typical massively diversified risk-averse Korean corporation. They will never adopt risky “crash or crash through” tactics like Apple.
I agree
Stating that they don’t want to be “one of many” OS would definitely rule out Samsung. No way they would ever make “Web OS” their “prime” OS. They already have in-house Bada if they want to go that route. And they don’t, as they have clearly favored Android, and do not mind producing WP7 devices occasionally.
Oh, and by the way, trying to look for partners which will use “Web OS” as their prime OS is likely a no-go, save some very small companies which do no interest HP.
It looks to me HP/Palm have not yet acknowledge their market position. I mean, do they seriously think anyone is waiting for them ?
Unlike MS, which doesn’t produce hardware for Windows or WP7, HP is an OEM already providing hardware for WebOS. Why would they need a MS/Nokia like deal? And why would they pay anyone $1Billion USD to do so? Microsoft was desperate for someone to do so – that’s why they did. Pure & simple. HP isn’t so desperate.
It will be interesting to see how things play out; but I think HP may be missing something if they think they can force others to do WebOS only, or WebOS primarily and push Android to the curb. Pushing WP7 to the curb shouldn’t be a problem – WebOS will have more market share than WP7 from HP hardware alone; but it’ll be a very very tough sell to get them to shove aside Android.
In all honest, HP should take the stance of allowing vendors to do Android+WebOS or just WebOS. Shove MS out of the picture and try to take second. WebOS and Android have enough in common to make that relatively feasible to do too – since companies wouldn’t have to necessarily double effort to support WebOS as both are Linux-based.
Well, bc while they are capable of producing *some* mobile hw, they have no comparable prod/sale capability of Nokia or Samsung.
They have apparently also tuned to “war of ecosystems” scheme and realised they can’t pull off rising one completely on their own.
Nokia / HP would be a match made in heaven, too bad we don’t live in a perfect world.
Edited 2011-06-30 12:37 UTC