HP set to decide future of Palm, webOS this week
HP is rumored to have finished the initial bidding process for its webOS unit and will hold an all-hands meeting tomorrow that may reveal its future plans for selling or spinning off the group, according to people familiar with the company's plans.
Context & Ripple Effects
HP's webOS unit has been in limbo since the summer, when Bloomberg reported HP was in talks to license webOS software rather than build devices on it itself. Since then the platform's hardware case has only weakened: HP's TouchPad has been called one of the worst iPad challengers of the past year, and the company has been openly criticized for its handling of Palm, while FCC filings for an unreleased 7-inch TouchPad Go show hardware that never reached shelves.
First-order effects
- Palm and webOS employees get their answer this week: an all-hands meeting tomorrow may confirm a completed initial bidding process and reveal whether the unit is sold, spun off, or kept.
Second-order effects
- A sale or spinoff would revive the licensing path HP explored in June, putting webOS in front of third-party device makers as a licensed alternative rather than an internal HP platform.
Third-order effects
- If HP exits, the tablet and smartphone OS field thins further toward the established incumbents, reinforcing the pattern that hardware-first companies struggle to sustain proprietary mobile platforms against entrenched ecosystems.
The trend: Mobile operating systems are consolidating around a few dominant ecosystems as large hardware vendors shed or license out the proprietary platforms they can no longer fund.