HP Launches The Beta Release Of Open WebOS
Gone are the days of HP's TouchPad and Palm ambitions, but HP is moving ahead with its plans to make webOS, it beleaguered mobile operating system, live on as open-source supported platform. Today it's launching the beta release.
Context & Ripple Effects
The beta closes out an arc that began with HP promising a webOS tablet back in August 2010, followed by the well-reviewed webOS 2.0 era that never translated into sales. After the TouchPad's collapse left Palm without a hardware program, HP first floated licensing the OS to other makers in June 2011, then committed in December 2011 to contributing webOS to open source.
Today's beta release is the first tangible output of that December open-source pledge, arriving after HP had already cleared inventory with a $150 TouchPad deal for developers. The timing matters: HP is simultaneously betting its consumer hardware future on Windows 8 hybrids like the newly unveiled Envy x2, meaning Open webOS now lives outside any HP device roadmap.
First-order effects
- Developers get working code they can build and test against, converting a stalled corporate asset into something the community can actually compile rather than wait on.
- HP hands day-to-day maintenance of webOS to the open-source project while its own Mobility division pivots to consumer tablets running someone else's OS.
Second-order effects
- Any OEM or carrier still curious about a third mobile platform gets a no-license-fee option, pressuring the licensing model HP itself floated back in mid-2011.
- With HP shipping Windows 8 hybrids and ceding webOS devices entirely, Microsoft gains another top-tier PC maker fully inside its tablet ecosystem at exactly the launch moment.
Third-order effects
- If the project sustains momentum, webOS becomes a test case for whether a failed proprietary mobile OS can survive as a community platform after its sponsor exits hardware — a playbook others may follow.
- The broader consolidation continues around iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, with open-sourcing emerging as the standard endgame for also-ran mobile platforms.
The trend: Mobile OS competition is consolidating around three platforms, with open-sourcing becoming the exit path that lets orphaned operating systems persist beyond their corporate owners.