Whitman: HP Decision on webOS Coming Within Two Weeks
Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman just gave an interview to Le Figaro, a French newspaper, saying that a decision on what to do with HP's webOS software will come within the next two weeks. — Here's the key quote, courtesy of Google Translate:
Context & Ripple Effects
HP has been circling webOS for months without landing anywhere: Bloomberg reported licensing talks in June, an October decision window came and went without a call, and a November all-hands meeting was billed as the moment the fate of webOS would be settled. Each deadline has slipped, leaving the software team and any prospective licensees in limbo.
The change today is that Meg Whitman, newly installed as CEO, put a fresh two-week clock on the decision in a Le Figaro interview — the first public timeline attached to her name rather than her predecessor's, and a signal that the review is running under new management.
First-order effects
- HP's webOS team and any partners from the June licensing discussions now have a dated decision point, ending the open-ended review that followed the October and November deadlines.
- Whitman stakes her own credibility on the two-week commitment, making this the first major platform call she owns publicly as CEO.
Second-order effects
- If HP chooses to license rather than sell or shelve webOS, would-be licensees must weigh it against Android and Windows Phone at exactly the moment those platforms are consolidating developer attention.
- A decision to keep or kill the platform determines whether Palm-era engineering talent stays at HP or becomes available to competitors building mobile OS teams.
Third-order effects
- The repeated slippage points to a structural problem for hardware-first companies holding orphaned operating systems: each month of indecision erodes both the asset's value and internal support for funding it.
- If the pattern holds, large vendors' platform bets increasingly get settled by CEO-level portfolio reviews rather than product-team momentum, with licensing versus divestment as the default endgames.
The trend: Acquired mobile platforms at hardware-centric companies are being resolved through top-down portfolio decisions — license, sell, or sunset — rather than sustained independent investment.