HP gives webOS developers a chance to get a $150 TouchPad
The future of webOS may still be up in the air, but it looks like HP is at least still making a small effort to woo developers and keep its current ones in the fold. It's now giving registered devs in the US …
Context & Ripple Effects
HP's developer giveaway is a small gesture inside a much larger retreat. The company launched the TouchPad in February 2011, then exited webOS hardware within months; by late October the discounted $99 TouchPad was officially out of stock with no further shipments planned, and HP had confirmed it would keep its PC business while deflecting any decision on webOS itself for at least another month.
The offer also lands against a backdrop of doubt about the platform's technical standing — an August test showed webOS running over twice as fast on an iPad as on HP's own hardware — and of HP hedging toward Windows instead, after earlier reports it might license webOS or ship Windows 8 tablets. Selling remaining TouchPad stock to registered US developers at $150 is less a product move than a retention play for a developer base with no committed roadmap.
First-order effects
- Registered US webOS developers get cheap access to discontinued hardware they can still build and test on, even though HP has stopped making the device and has given no platform commitment beyond a one-month delay on deciding webOS's fate.
Second-order effects
- Developers weighing where to invest face a starker choice between webOS and platforms with committed roadmaps — HP's own Slate 2 Windows tablet, launched days earlier, signals where the company's shipping hardware attention sits.
Third-order effects
- If HP ultimately licenses or open-sources webOS rather than killing it outright, the surviving asset would be the developer community this kind of gesture is meant to hold together — the pattern being that a failed hardware platform tries to persist as software through its installed developer base.
The trend: Tablet platforms that lose their hardware backer are shifting from device businesses to software-licensing or community-retention plays, with developer goodwill as the asset being preserved.