Former Palm head Jon Rubinstein leaves HP, taking a long-deserved break

Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple executive who spearheaded engineering for the iPod, and then proceeded to revitalize Palm, has officially left Hewlett-Packard, the company confirmed today.

The news isn’t entirely unexpected. Rubinstein was reportedly a no-show at HP since former CEO Leo Apotheker killed off the company’s WebOS devices. Even before that his role at HP was reduced with a change to a vague “SVP of innovation” title.

An HP spokesperson told All Things Digital, … Continue Reading

HP plans for Open webOS 1.0 by September, Enyo framework out today

HP is moving forward with its plans to open source webOS, after failing to sell it off last year.

The company says it plans to complete the open sourcing process for webOS by September, which will be called Open webOS 1.0 when it’s released. Today, HP is getting the ball rolling by releasing the Enyo 1.0 Javascript framework, as well as the cross-platform Enyo 2.0 core, under open source licensing.

When HP announced its open … Continue Reading

Tough negotiator: HP wanted $1.2B for webOS and Palm’s assets (exclusive)

$1.2 billion. That’s how much HP paid for Palm last year, and it’s also how much the company was trying to sell its Palm assets for over the latter half of 2011, VentureBeat has learned.

As baffling as it may seem, HP was trying to rid itself of Palm without taking a loss on its purchase, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told us. When asked for confirmation about the pricing, an HP representative … Continue Reading

WebOS will live on in HP tablets, according to CEO Meg Whitman

Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman says tablets are still in the cards for the newly open sourced WebOS, despite lackluster sales for the mobile operating system’s original product, the Touchpad.

Whitman and investor Marc Andreessen of venture firm Andreessen-Horowitz explained to The Verge that HP is not ready to give up on WebOS devices just yet. It believes the operating system is only going to get better with more hands contributing to its development under … Continue Reading

HP open sources webOS, plans for tablets in 2013 (updated)

After shopping webOS around to major companies like Amazon and Qualcomm, HP has decided to make the platform available to the open source community, the company announced today.

The move allows third-party companies to use webOS, but HP will still be able to guide development of the platform. HP says it will be an “active participant and investor in the project.”

“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected … Continue Reading

Whitman says future of webOS will be decided in two weeks

New HP CEO Meg Whitman has a tough decision about what to do with webOS, so she’s given herself a little more breathing room by saying the final call will come in two weeks.

HP, which bought webOS-creator Palm last year for $1.2 billion, is in a precarious position about what to do with the troubled mobile operating system. After HP axed the HP TouchPad and then saw incredible demand for the discontinued device at … Continue Reading

As Palm bidding continues, HP wants a sweet deal to keep webOS in printers (exclusive)

For some strange reason, HP is still really hot on the idea of mating webOS with its printers — to the point where it has become a crucial part of its negotiations to sell off its Palm assets.

In addition to settling on a good price for the Palm goodies, HP is also demanding that potential buyers license webOS back to it on the cheap for use in printers, a source with knowledge of the … Continue Reading

HP is not sure what to do with webOS, says CEO

In a company meeting Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said she isn’t sure exactly what move to make with the company’s hobbled webOS operating system, reports The Verge.

HP paid $1.2 billion for webOS’ creator Palm in 2010 with the intent to run the operating system on its mobile devices, such as the TouchPad. However, the company’s former CEO Leo Apotheker decided to shutter the line of webOS devices months ago. Now that Whitman has … Continue Reading

HP PC Boss: Shutting down of WebOS is “unfounded rumor”

The head of HP’s PC division Todd Bradley called a report yesterday that HP has decided to shut down its WebOS devision an “unfounded rumor.”

Bradley, appearing in a Bloomberg West interview last night, said that contrary to the rumors published yesterday by the Guardian, HP had not yet made up its mind, and that it will weigh all the “data and information” before making “the right decision.”

Still, the statements leave WebOS dangerously in … Continue Reading

WebOS still a goner after Whitman saves HP’s PC division?

[Update: HP has since said this is an "unfounded rumor."]

HP decided yesterday that it would, in fact, keep its massive PC business alive, but the webOS division will reportedly not be so lucky.

A report by the Guardian says the unit will be shut down, and that and up to 500 jobs could be cut along with it.

When HP’s former CEO Leo Apotheker announced the company was considering spinning off its … Continue Reading

HP launches investigation into mysterious Android TouchPads, says it didn’t ship them

An unauthorized shipment of TouchPads running the Android operating system has HP scrambling for leads, and open source advocates up in arms.

The TouchPads in question were supposed to ship with webOS, HP’s beleaguered mobile operating system. Instead, some users found that their TouchPads were actually running Android 2.2, a.k.a. Froyo.

As you can see in the video below, the user, who says he bought the TouchPad at Best Buy, demonstrates what he assumes is … Continue Reading

Amazon has Palm in its shopping cart — will it click Buy? (exclusive)

Who will save what’s left of Palm from HP’s bumbling? It could be Amazon, as the online retailing giant is in serious negotiations to snap up Palm from HP, VentureBeat has learned.

A well-placed source tells us that HP is currently looking to rid itself of Palm as soon as possible, and that Amazon is the closest to finalizing the deal, among a handful of contenders.

Indeed, after yesterday’s announcement of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, … Continue Reading

HP sacks over 500 WebOS employees

The inevitable layoffs for workers in HP’s webOS division began this week, with the company planning to let as many as 525 workers go, reports All Things Digital.

After HP killed its webOS hardware business out of the blue in August, the company had made it clear that downsizing was inevitable. While the company says it’s still committed to webOS as a software platform, that doesn’t mean much for the workers in the webOS hardware … Continue Reading

Samsung CEO: We would “never” buy WebOS

Samsung CEO Choi Gee Sung has quashed rumors that the company is interested in HP’s webOS software, saying that it would “never” pursue such a deal, Bloomberg reports.

Samsung seemed like one of the better fits for webOS, and we reported last week that it was possibly interested in snapping up the software. But now it seems HP will be stuck with webOS for some time, unless another brave company steps up to buy it.… Continue Reading

For sale: $40 billion PC business, only slightly used

Two weeks after announcing that it might be spinning off its PC business, HP is following through: It just put the business up for sale.

Well, sort of. In what may be a corporate first, the company announced the availability of its division through an advertising campaign and a blog post.

“The new organization would be a $40 billion business with the agility and freedom of a start-up. That’s an exciting prospect,” the post read.… Continue Reading

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff cheers on HP for fleeing PC industry

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff said Hewlett-Packard made the right call by getting out of the PC industry.

“HP threw their hat in the ring on PCs and said we’re out — why?” he said today at the Dreamforce 2011 conference in San Francisco, Calif. “It’s because smartphones and tablets are taking over. We recognize that incredible fact.”

HP recently decided to spin out its PC-building industry as the … Continue Reading

App.net invites Windows Phone 7, Blackberry and HTML5 in from the cold

App.net, a website for helping distribute and monetize mobile apps, got started in 2010 with iOS and Android. Today it is expanding its support to three new app platforms: Windows Phone 7 (WP7), Blackberry and HTML5.

App.net is owned and operated by Mixed Media Labs, which was founded by Bryan Berg and Dalton Caldwell.

“A lot of the larger shops have apps on multiple platforms, and there are small developers that are experimenting with WP7,” … Continue Reading

Not quite dead? Stand-alone Hewlett-Packard PC business could resurrect the TouchPad

Fans of Hewlett-Packard’s ill-fated TouchPad tablet might want to hold off on lamenting its death.

HP’s TouchPad, which was shuttered just months after its initial debut, could return if the company spins off its personal computing division into a stand-alone company, an HP executive said Tuesday.

“Tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant, absolutely,” said Executive Vice President of HP’s personal systems group Todd Bradly in an interview with Reuters.

Bradly, who … Continue Reading

HP leaves TouchPad Go suppliers in the lurch with parts for 100K tablets

WebOS fans weren’t the only ones let down by HP’s sudden decision to give up on its mobile hardware weeks ago. Component suppliers who were gearing up to build 100,000 units of HP’s TouchPad Go, a 7-inch version of its tablet, were also left high and dry, Digitimes reports.

Sources tell the site that suppliers are in negotiations with HP to figure out some sort of solution for their now useless supply inventory. HP Taiwan … Continue Reading

Samsung eyes WebOS, recruits ex-HP VP for PC sales

Samsung may be taking advantage of HP’s recent missteps. The company is reportedly thinking of purchasing HP’s webOS software, and it has also recruited HP’s ex-VP of PC marketing Raymond Wah, reports the Taiwanese news site Digitimes.

Of all of the potential webOS buyers out there, Samsung is one of the most interesting. The company has already gained some ground in low-end phones with its Bada software, and it has been nimble enough to succeed … Continue Reading