HP’s sudden decision to cease manufacturing of webOS hardware, outside of a small run of TouchPads, has left them with little to no room to negotiate with interested parties. That assumes there are interested parties, outside of those looking for Palm’s patent portfolio. HP’s decision to drop webOS devices doesn’t exactly stir up demand for webOS. While the firesale resurgence has given some a glimmer of hope for the struggling operating system, it’s doesn’t seem likely that a manufacturer will be willing to make the necessary investment to breathe life into webOS. Further evidence of this today, when Samsung’s CEO said his company would “never” pursue the purchase of webOS.
“It’s not right that acquiring an operating system is becoming a fashion,” Choi said. Samsung, which has its own mobile operating system called Bada, is working to boost its software capability “harder than people outside think.”
As we mentioned when news first broke of HP’s decision, don’t get your hopes up that webOS will be saved by licensing. If HP does sell off webOS, it will likely be part of a Palm patents deal or it will be sold to a company like Huwaei, who could use the OS for phones in China.
Source: Bloomberg
There’s a lot of buzz regarding Palm’s patent portfolio, but wouldn’t some/many of those have been sold off to Access after Palm’s failed attempt to buy back palmOne? I always took that as one of the motivating forces for developing webOS in the first place … as well as just having a more modern OS that supported multitasking.