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Unlikely. Besides the fact that almost no one actually has any faith in it as a platform due to the way HP dropped it, even if they did do a 180, people would
by The_Sponge 15y ago
Unlikely. Besides the fact that almost no one actually has any faith in it as a platform due to the way HP dropped it, even if they did do a 180, people would still have shaken confidence.
Not to mention that there are currently no currently officially selling WebOS devices (except for a few straggling phones in the discount bin), nor plans for new ones.
And, when your competitors are Android, WP7, and iOS, getting over the vicious cycle of "no developers making apps which means no people are buying apps which means that no developers are making apps..." is just too much. Even Android was struggling with that and still is on the tablet side even with the Google juggernaut behind it.
Plus, even in printers and lower end devices and phones like that, WebOS is overkill. Samsung's Bada and Android are crowding that market too tightly, not to mention Symbian.
Maybe we'll see WebOS as an "instant boot" option on a few HP PC models for which it was already in development but that doesn't really count.
There's no future for WebOS. It's dead. When your competitors are Microsoft, Google, and Apple, and they already have entrenched hardware and software products in the same market that are innovative and being actively developed, and are directly competing against yours, and are having far more money pumped into them, and have thriving ecosystems, and haven't been officially been killed off, you may just be best off going home.
- firefoxman1 15y agoI'm sure you could find dozens of articles from 1996-1998 saying similar things about Apple, but imagine how different the world would be if Jobs listened to them and just declared Apple "dead" and didn't return to the company. WebOS is a great platform and it's not too late to save, but it needs a better company than HP to breathe new life into it. In my opinion, it's much better than iOS for tablets and larger devices (the perfect TV?) but the clock is ticking. Every day HP wastes with decisions like "should we kill one of our largest sources of revenue?" Apple is right next door developing amazing products for tomorrow like Siri.
- ScottBurson 15y agoIn fairness, HP never proposed to "kill one of its largest sources of revenue". The idea was to get some cash by selling or spinning off a relatively low-margin division. Killing it would be ridiculous. IBM certainly didn't "kill" its PC division; Lenovo is now the #2 vendor.
- firefoxman1 15y agoWhile IBM wasn't nearly the world's biggest PC maker as HP is right now, I would like to see a similar deal happen with WebOS. Lenovo has proven to manage the thinkpad line better than IBM[1]. [1] http://www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles/229026-hp-remains-biggest-pc-maker-lenovo-moves-ahead.htm http://www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles/229026-hp-remains-bigg...
- dpio 15y agowebOS doesn't have a steve jobs, or else it might still be around.
- firefoxman1 15y agoAgreed. That's why I would love to see it in the hands of Bezos and team.
- Tloewald 15y agoThe big difference here was that the Mac had been around for ten years, had a big user base (even if small relative to windows) and sustainable compelling advantages over its competitors (best versions of most graphics apps, only versions of some, many unique media apps (e.g avid, protools), real multiple monitor support, system level color management). If WebOS had ten years of history and a bunch of industry leading apps on it the analogy might be stronger.