July 9-10, 2013
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HP’s 2010 acquisition of Palm was a complete disaster, and few people are likely more bitter about it than former Palm CEO and webOS creator Jon Rubinstein.

In a recent interview with FierceWireless, Rubinstein said that he wasn’t crazy about the way HP’s Palm acquisition went down. “I’m not sure I would have sold [Palm] to HP. That’s for sure. Talk about a waste,” he said.

Rubinstein, who now spends his time on the directorial boards of  Amazon and Qualcomm, became Palm’s CEO in June 2009, not long after the promising release of webOS. A year later HP stepped in, buying Palm and webOS for $1.3 billion before surrendering both to paltry product sales in a smartphone market that very quickly left HP behind. The company eventually discontinued devices running webOS and, earlier this year, sold the operating system to LG.

While the situation was probably tough for Rubinstein to watch, one vindication for the webOS approach comes in the form of iOS 7, which borrows more than a few cues from Palm’s operating system. WebOS may have been swallowed up by the smartphone market, but its influences are still very much around — for whatever that’s worth.

July 9-10, 2013
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You can’t keep a good operating system down.

WebOS, which went down with the sinking TouchPad ship before being revived shortly thereafter, has found a new home: LG’s smart televisions.

In addition to the OS’s source code, LG is also picking up webOS’s remaining development team, documentation, and associated websites, the company confirmed on Monday afternoon. 

“It creates a new path for LG to offer an intuitive user experience and Internet services across a range of consumer electronics devices,” LG president Skott Ahn said in a statement.

The move is a strange but somehow fitting conclusion(?) to the long, tragic tale of webOS, which has seen more than its share of hardship over the last two years. The operating system always had a lot of promise, but not particularly effective executions. Perhaps LG’s buy will give webOS the attention it needs. 

More strange, though, is that LG says it has no plans to bring webOS to its smartphones, which is obviously the most sensible use for the operating system. LG, it seems, is fully committed to Android, even if Android hasn’t served it particularly well as of late.

In any case, I’m looking forward to seeing how webOS fares in the living room.

Updated: 1:40 Pacific with clarification & confirmation from LG

July 9-10, 2013
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HP’s plan to open source Palm’s webOS is on schedule: yesterday, the company released version 1.0 of Open webOS, which means that developers can now port the software to new devices.

As if on cue, the WebOS Ports team (which isn’t affiliated with HP), announced yesterday that they’ve ported Open webOS 1.0 to the Galaxy Nexus (see video below), the Verge reports. The team has been working on the port for two months, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. They’ve managed to get Open WebOS connected to Wi-Fi, but hardware acceleration and basic phone functions like texting still aren’t working.

HP released its first Open webOS beta to developers last month, and at the time the company boasted that it contained over 450,000 lines of code. Yesterday, HP revealed that it has built more than 75 Open webOS components over the past nine months. The company won’t be bringing the OS to other devices, but it did create a video showing how Open webOS can run on a TouchSmart all-in-one PC.

It’ll be interesting to see just how far developers can take Open webOS. In particular, existing webOS device owners may be interested in the update (HP isn’t officially updating older devices). But I suspect many webOS fans have given up on their Palm mobile dreams long ago.

July 9-10, 2013
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HP’s history with smartphones may have been one disaster after another, but HP chief executive Meg Whitman says the company isn’t giving up on mobile devices.

“We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device. We are a computing company; we have to take advantage of that form factor,” she said in an interview with Fox Business.

Whitman’s comments come a little over a year after HP announced it was discontinuing sales of devices running webOS, the mobile operating system it acquired from Palm in 2010. This included devices like the HP Pre 3, a smartphone with an awfully short product life.

Whitman does acknowledge that HP didn’t do things completely right with smartphones the first time around. ”We did take a detour into smartphones, and we’ve got to get it right this time,” she said.

HP’s unfortunate past aside, Whitman is right that the smartphone is quickly becoming the center of our computing world. But HP hasn’t shown any evidence that it can do anything with that knowledge.

So what can we expect? A device running open webOS? Android? Windows 7? While there’s no way to know for sure just yet, we do know this: Whatever device HP does decide to make, it’s going to be very, very late to the party.

Photo: Flickr/BENM.AT Live Coverage

July 9-10, 2013
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A brand with many faces, webOS has gone through more than its share of changes in the last few years. And in its latest act, it’s being freed from the shackles of Hewlett-Packard.

HP bought webOS along with its creator Palm in 2010. But soon after the purchase, the endeavor went south, and HP was forced to shutter the Palm division and rebrand it as its “webOS Global Business Unit.”

But Palm and webOS are now reborn in the form of a new company, dubbed Gram. The company’s name comes with the tagline “Potent. Light. Nimble”.

The team appears to have a pretty clear vision of itself: “Gram is a new company leveraging the core strengths of webOS, Enyo, our Cloud offerings as well as the firepower of our partners to create a technology that will unleash  freedom of the Web.”

With the shift in branding, Palm is also changing course on products. Gram won’t be about consumer electronics; instead, it will focus on software, user experience, the cloud, and engineering. So while it’s not completely unlikely that you’ll see a Gram-produced smartphone or tablet, you probably shouldn’t hold your breath for them.

But what exactly will Gram produce?  The new company is making a point of not saying. In fact, Gram employees are being advised to reply to all questions about the company with a vaguely-cultish response: “Gram is a new company. We are in stealth mode on our product offering.”

Essentially, this means we won’t know the fate of projects like Open webOS for some time. But at least Palm is sort of back on its feet again.

July 9-10, 2013
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The main coders working on HP’s Enyo  — the HTML5 application framework first seen in the HP TouchPad — have jumped ship and are headed to Google, the Verge reports.

This puts a huge dent in HP’s plan to open source webOS, which admittedly was weak from the start. HP only announced that it was opening up webOS after it failed to find a suitable buyer. We reported that HP tried to sell its Palm assets for $1.2 billion — the same price it initially paid for them.

Sources tell the Verge that the departing crew wrote “99 percent of the code” for Enyo, and that also includes Matt McNulty, who headed the Enyo team. HP planned to release the first version of Open webOS later this year, but without the Enyo folks I can’t really see that happening. (In a statement to the Verge, HP said everything was on schedule.)

HP announced earlier this week that it’s laying off 27,000 employees — which likely gave the Enyo crew the impetus to move on.

The news doesn’t mean that we’ll start seeing great webOS design influences and features in Android. The Enyo team was instead focused on making it easier for developers to create apps for the platform. It’s still unclear where they’ll end up at Google, but it will likely be either the Android team (though Android apps are built in Java, not HTML5) or Google Chrome (which could use a robust HTMl5 app framework).

July 9-10, 2013
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As expected, Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will start manufacturing tablets again, but instead of webOS these tablets will run Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 OS.

HP famously launched the webOS TouchPad tablet in July 2011 and then axed its whole Palm-based tablet and smartphone operation six weeks later. Consumers gobbled up the marked-down $99 TouchPads, but the company seemed like it was done with consumer tablets, at least for a spell. Now it will invest in tablets with the Windows 8 OS, which will likely appeal to consumers and businesses more than webOS did.

A few weeks back, an HP tablet running Windows 8 called the “Slate 8″ leaked on the web. That tablet reportedly is thinner than the newest iPad at 9.2mm thin and it will weigh .68 kilograms, feature a 10.1-inch display, and have battery life between 8 and 10 hours.

Windows 8 is due out later this year and is part of Microsoft’s strategy to find a middle ground between tablets and PCs — much in the same way Apple has done with its OS X and iOS. A near-complete Windows 8 build will be released in early June, but as of now the company has not announced an official launch date for the OS. We’ve heard later in this year’s third quarter is the most likely launch time because the OS would be able to take advantage of holiday sales.

Take a look at the document that was leaked a few weeks ago to get an idea of what HP’s first tablet will probably look like:

July 9-10, 2013
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It’s not a great day for HP employees. The company just announced it has laid off 275 employees from its webOS division, The Verge reported.

The news follows webOS head John Rubinstein’s recent departure.

HP released a statement today, saying that it is letting go of most of its webOS team because the employees are no longer needed for webOS projects:

As webOS continues the transition from making mobile devices to open source software, it no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before. This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP’s commitment to the software over the long term.

HP is working to redeploy employees affected by these changes to other roles at the company.

It’s unclear how many engineers came from Palm and how many HP hired to work on webOS, but either way its an unfortunate number of people who lost their jobs. As unfortunate as it is, the move doesn’t really come as a surprise. HP ended up killing off webOS hardware because it wasn’t selling enough devices. And last September, All Things D reported that HP cut 500 employees from its webOS division.

In December, HP chief executive Meg Whitman made an announcement that webOS was going to become open sourced and that the OS would live on HP tablets again, but laying off 275 employees doesn’t inspire confidence in that plan.

HP thought it was on to something with the Touchpad and thought bigger, better devices were to come. Hopes were high last year before the Touchpad launch that the new HP tablet would blow Apple’s forthcoming iPad 2 out of the water. But the iPad already had a loyal following and proved too tough a tablet to beat.

HP had no other comment about the layoffs.

July 9-10, 2013
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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, which first reported the news about Rubinstein’s departure, that “Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well.” Rubinstein confirmed that he only agreed to stick around HP for 12 to 24 months after it acquired Palm, in an interview with The Verge.

Speaking to the Verge’s Joshua Topolsky, Rubinstein deftly avoided chatting about where Palm went wrong or complaining about Apotheker’s treatment of webOS:

We built an amazing OS in webOS. It’s very advanced, it’s where things are going. But we ran out of runway, and we ended up at HP and HP wasn’t in good enough shape on its own to be able to support the effort. I had four CEOs! Mark acquired us, Les Jackson took over as the interim CEO, then Leo, and now Meg.

Now Rubinstein, seemingly going full circle, is taking a much-deserved break in Mexico, where the Palm folks initially tapped him to help save the company in 2007. He admitted that he’s still carrying a tiny webOS-powered Veer, and that he hopes to get back into the mobile world in some fashion.

“I think the future is mobile,” Rubinstein told the Verge. “Obviously there’s going to be stuff that comes post mobile, there’ll be a next wave. It could very well be home integration, but mobile’s going to continue to be really important. But I have no idea what I’m going to do next. I haven’t spent a minute thinking about it.”

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
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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 source ambitions in December, it said that it will still continue to develop and support he webOS platform. Today’s announcements show that the company is holding true to its promise.

Enyo is the framework used to create webOS apps on the HP TouchPad and other HP webOS devices. Enyo 1.0, which won’t be developed any further, will let developers bring their webOS apps to other platforms. The real future of the framework lies in Enyo 2.0, which can create apps that run across mobile devices and desktop web browsers. Right now HP is only making the core of Enyo 2.0 available, which will let developers begin making apps, with a UI widget set and other features to follow.

HP plans to include its distribution of the WebKit browser in future Enyo updates, which will be able to run Flash and Silverlight via plug-ins. Also worth noting: the company says it will switch over to the Linux Foundation’s standard kernel, which will open up the amount of devices that can run Open webOS down the line. That alone will make the platform more intriguing to device makers who are looking for something beyond Android.

Developers will be able to get their hands on Open webOS builds soon, while TouchPad customers can expect an update in “late summer.” HP is also considering offering the new OS to all existing webOS devices, though I wouldn’t bet on HP spending too much effort to support early Palm Pres and Pixis.

Via The Verge

July 9-10, 2013
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$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 declined to comment.

The company seemingly ignored that Palm’s value had fallen significantly since HP purchased the smartphone pioneer in April 2010, thanks to the spectacular failure of the HP Touchpad tablet. And the fact that HP didn’t make any progress with its new webOS phones, the Pre 3 and Veer, didn’t help either.

It’s no wonder then that HP failed to find a suitor for Palm, after having discussions with Amazon, Samsung, Intel, and many others. HP eventually decided to open source webOS, allowing it to take advantage of the platform in the future without the need to allocate resources to keep it alive. HP CEO Meg Whitman said the company still plans to develop new webOS tablets in 2012.

It’s possible that HP eventually lowered its asking price for Palm, but it likely would have had to fall below $500 million for any company to consider snapping it up. We’ve also heard that HP was asking for continued access to webOS for use in its printers, something that would have only scared away potential suitors.

The $1.2 billion asking price shines some light on a story we heard from another source: At one point, HP’s team tried to pitch the sale to Facebook but was practically laughed out of the room. At first, I attributed that story to Facebook’s side being a bit obnoxious, but I can’t blame them if HP was indeed asking $1.2 billion. And yes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was present at the meeting, although he apparently didn’t say much (I’m sure whatever he was thinking at the time would have been gold).

At this point, it seems that HP is either a terrible negotiator or never really wanted to let go of webOS in the first place.

July 9-10, 2013
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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 the new open source model. These potential devices include tablets, but not smartphones, as the company has become disenchanted with the mobile product.

“In the near term what I would imagine – and this could change, in full disclosure – is I would think tablets, I do not believe we will be in the smartphone business again,” the duo told The Verge.

The timing is still on shaky ground, even internally for HP. Whitman was careful to explain that the company couldn’t promise anything for 2012. Producing the device will require team formation, which Whitman says will take time to carefully construct. She also noted that the new teams would go in a “different direction than we’ve been taking it in the past.”

Part of the desire to continue the tablet may come from HP’s success with the Touchpad’s discounted sales. WebOS is actually a desirable operating system for tablets. It’s popularity originally stemmed from the ability to multitask — a gripe many have had with Apple’s iOS. Multitasking is the ability to load and use an application while another is open. This is particularly appreciated when it comes to web browsing. Instead of waiting for a page to load, you can leave the page as you would on a computer and return to find it ready for action.

HP is having another sale of its Touchpad starting December 11. This sale takes place only on eBay and features $99 and $149 Touchpads, which have been refurbished.

July 9-10, 2013
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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 and scalable,” HP CEO Meg Whitman said in a statement today. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

But while webOS will live on, HP will likely still follow-up the news with more layoffs from its webOS group. After all, with help from the open source community, HP won’t need as many bodies on board to push the platform forward. We heard that the company was close to releasing several new webOS devices before it decided to get out of the mobile business earlier this year.

HP said in a blog post today that it will “explore the viability” of new webOS devices, but I don’t see that happening (aside from the company’s curious obsession with webOS printers). Update: Whitman says that HP hasn’t given up on tablets just yet — it’s working on webOS tablets for later 2012 or 2013, reports the Verge.

The news is particularly good for consumers, since it means we can see webOS popping up on non-HP devices in the future. And if you picked up one of those cheap TouchPad tablets, there’s the potential that you’ll actually be able to receive updates in the future (though intellectual property issues may make that impossible), or upgrade the slate entirely to an open sourced version of webOS.

We reported in September that Amazon was one of many companies in deep negotiations to acquire webOS, a varied group that at times was said to include Intel, Qualcomm, and RIM. HP was actively trying to sell webOS up until last month, when we caught word that it was also demanding a sweet deal to use webOS in its future printers. Now, as an open source project, HP will still be able to throw webOS on its printers (yay?), while also getting development help for free.

HP says it will open source the underlying webOS code and work together with the open source community to define a charter for the open source webOS project. Additionally, HP says it will make ENYO, the webOS application framework, available to the open source community as well.

July 9-10, 2013
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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 a $99 fire-sale price, it was unclear what the best course of action would be. Many rumors have swirled about what the final fate of webOS, with sources saying Amazon wants the OS and a new report suggesting HP will keep webOS working for printers.

Whitman’s latest remarks on webOS came in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro that was spotted by The Verge. On top of saying the decision would come in two weeks, Whitman said “we need to have another operating system,” which presumably means Windows 8. But Windows 8 on tablets won’t come until 2012, so we’ll have to just see what happens with webOS and the 600 or so employees HP still has working on it.

In early November, Whitman said the company still was unsure what to do with webOS. “It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” she reportedly said at the time to a room full of HP employees.

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 negotiations tells VentureBeat.

As for the status of the Palm sale, which includes webOS and Palm’s lovely treasure trove of patents, our source says that Intel has just begun discussions with HP. Our source also says that Qualcomm is still in the running for Palm, but the company has adamantly denied previous rumors about the deal.

Now I’m all for more innovative printers from HP, but it seems like a strange demand when the company is losing money every day it continues to hold on to webOS. (Pictured above, HP’s inexplicable printer/Android tablet combo.) HP paid $1.2 billion for Palm last year, and it revealed in its earnings report today that it spent another $1.66 billion just to wind down its webOS business, as AllThingsD points out.

HP has said previously that webOS could eventually make its way to printers and PCs, but now with a Palm sale imminent, it seems strange for the company to hold true to that initial promise. I can’t imagine that many consumers are chomping at the bit for webOS-enabled printers, and much of the benefit from using webOS as the basis of printer software — including ease of development and potential third-party app support — could be seen by jumping to Android.

Then again, it’s possible that HP has webOS printers near completion, so by licensing the software it’ll still be able to move forward with those products. Given that no major printer competitors are aiming for Palm, a potential buyer shouldn’t have any problem licensing webOS to HP (though that depends on how cheap HP’s demands are for the licensing fees).

And what of Amazon? In September we reported that Amazon was in deep negotiations to snap up Palm, but it’s unclear if that’s still the case now. I still think Amazon would be a good fit for webOS — definitely more so than other alternatives like Intel, Qualcomm, or, God forbid, RIM — because it would be able to take advantage of Palm’s software in future tablets. And of course, it wouldn’t hurt for Amazon to be sitting pretty with Palm’s patents.

July 9-10, 2013
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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 taken the company’s reigns, she’s carefully re-assessing webOS’ fate.

“It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” Whitman apparently said to a room full of HP employees Tuesday. She added that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks.

“If HP decides [to keep webOS], we’re going to do it in a very significant way over a multi-year period,” Whitman said — focusing mostly on tablet computing rather than making the ecosystem more “complicated,” according to The Verge report.

The news that HP might not sell webOS is a bit surprising. Previously, we’d heard that the company was trying to unload the operating system to potential buyers like Amazon.

Whitman said during HP’s quarterly earnings call that the company would decide webOS’ future over the next couple months. Now it seems that the company is moving up that time-table.

[Image above is a screenshot of President Not Sure from the movie Idiocracy]

July 9-10, 2013
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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 limbo, and that’s likely to discourage employees of the WebOS unit at a time when some high-ranking HP employees have already started leaving the company. WebOS, a slick mobile operating system, developed by smartphone maker Palm before it was acquired by HP, had received wide accolades. But it was hobbled by the fumbling of its owners, first Palm, and then HP — who did too little, too late to encourage developers to make applications for it. Meanwhile, HP looks set to throw its PC and device future to Microsoft’s mobile OS.

July 9-10, 2013
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[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 PC business — the largest in the world — and would kill the webOS hardware division, HP’s stock tanked and Apotheker got kicked out. New HP CEO Meg Whitman was installed, and a month later, HP says it’s keeping its PC division. But unlike that course correction, the company appears to be done with webOS and will pursue Windows 8 for tablets.

During HP’s quarterly earnings call yesterday, Whitman said, “We’ll make a decision about the long-term future of webOS within the next couple months.” However, the Guardian report says the decision has already been made to cut webOS. HP paid $1.2 billion for Palm and webOS in April 2010, and it was commonly thought HP would make a major play in smartphones and tablets with Palm as the backing. But nothing ever came out, as Apotheker wanted the company to focus on software rather than hardware.

The webOS smartphone and tablet operating system seemed to get a second wind right after HP announced plans to kill the webOS division. The company’s once-$499 TouchPad tablet running webOS dropped down to a $99 fire sale price point and consumers hungrily gobbled them up.

During yesterday’s earnings call, Whitman officially deflected on webOS but seemed enthusiastic about making tablets for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 OS. Windows 8, which is made to run on tablets, laptops and desktops alike, looks like a slick OS, and if combined with the right hardware, it could be very successful.

It would be sad to see webOS not get another chance, considering that it was a good operating system in search of powerful hardware that never showed up. But if the webOS division does get shut down completely, we hope HP releases some amazing tablets with Windows 8.

July 9-10, 2013
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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 a test device from Qualcomm.

“I cannot find a way to get the Android Market or download any Android applications onto the device,” he writes.

“As for the TouchPad units that have been allegedly purchased with a version of Android on them, we have begun an internal investigation on this within HP,” writes Philip Robb of HP’s Open Source Program Office to cmtouchapd, a group attempting to develop a legitimate Android port for the TouchPad.

“We have confirmed that HP never authorized the distribution of any version of Android on the HP TouchPad,” Robb continued.

But the most interesting part of Robb’s email is a statement that HP never did, even accidentally, ship Android-running TouchPads.

“In addition, from a review of our manufacturing process, we believe that all TouchPad units have been shipped out of manufacturing with the webOS operating system only and that no TouchPad units were shipped with Android, even by mistake,” he wrote.

Robb noted that the unauthorized Android TouchPads were seen internally as detrimental to HP’s relationship with the open-source community, and it asked the community to provide information that might help the company track down the source of these rogue units.

HP thinks an unknown person or group must have diverted the Android TouchPads “strictly against the policy and authorization of HP.”

More than one hacker group is also working on bringing Android to the TouchPad. Earlier this fall, we told you about the Touchdroid project, a group working on developing a port of Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Robb noted for the developers working on Android ports for the TouchPad, “We applaud your efforts… It is your device, and you can do with it what you want.”

July 9-10, 2013
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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, no other company seems as fitting a home for Palm and its webOS software. It’s worth noting that former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, who now holds a vague “product innovation” role at HP’s Personal Services Group, joined Amazon’s board late last year.

When asked for comment, an HP spokesperson said the company doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation. We’re still waiting to hear back from an Amazon representative.

The Kindle Fire is powered by Android, but it’s been heavily customized by Amazon to the point where you can barely tell. By purchasing the remnants of Palm, Amazon would have free rein to redesign webOS to its own liking, and it would be able to further differentiate its Kindle devices from the slew of Android tablets in the market.

And even though HP has given up entirely on its webOS hardware business after the TouchPad tablet failed spectacularly, there’s still plenty of potential for webOS to power a successful device. Palm’s mobile software was praised for its slick multi-tasking capabilities, which could allow future Kindle Fire tablets to juggle games, movies and media with more finesse than Android.

It also appears that HP has been eyeing Amazon for some time as a potential webOS partner. In an interview with This is my next in July, Rubinstein revealed quite a bit about having Amazon use webOS in its future tablets:

So, we’d like a partner that would allow us to expand the webOS ecosystem… There’s a variety of different sets of a characteristics to qualify as a good partner. I would say Amazon would certainly make a great partner, because they have a lot of characteristics that would help them expand the webOS ecosystem. As to whether there’s been discussions or not… that’s obviously not something I’m going to comment about.

HP paid $1.2 billion for Palm in 2010, but Amazon will end up spending a fraction of that if the deal goes through. Given just how badly the TouchPad failed, HP will likely offer what’s left of Palm at a major discount, especially since Amazon woudn’t be interested in resuscitating now extinct webOS hardware.

Personally, I’ve never had much faith in HP’s ability to effectively manage Palm and webOS. Amazon, with its commitment to long-term planning and innovative consumer devices, seems like a much better fit. And in a way, it seems fitting for the company that released the first widely-available $200 tablet to snap up the company that made PDAs, the precursor to the smartphone, a phenomenon.

Update: DealBook’s Evelyn Rusli explores how Amazon may be eyeing Palm’s patents with this potential purchase.

Graphic credit: Tom Cheredar

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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 division.

HP confirmed to All Things Digital that layoffs were happening: “As communicated on August 18, HP will discontinue the development of webOs devices within the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2011, which ends Oct. 31, 2011,” a spokesperson said. “As part of this decision, the webOS GBU is undergoing a reduction in workforce. Today’s actions are part of this initiative. During this time, we stand by our commitment to our webOS customers and will work to ensure that support and service for customers are not adversely affected. HP is exploring ways to leverage webOS software.”

While expected, it’s still sad to see HP’s webOS team breaking apart. I’m not sure how the company will be able to keep its remaining webOS employees on task when it’s fairly obvious the mobile OS, which HP snagged as part of its $1.2 billion Palm purchase last year, doesn’t have much of a future. The company has discussed licensing the OS to other manufacturers, and a number of companies are rumored to be eyeing a webOS purchase.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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.

“It’s not right that acquiring an operating system is becoming a fashion,” Choi told reporters at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. He went on to say that the company is working on its Bada software for low-end phones “harder than people outside think.”

We noted last month that Bada had a bigger worldwide market share than Microsoft’s flagship Windows Phone 7 platform, according to Gartner.

Other potential buyers for webOS include HTC and Facebook, Bloomberg reports. I can’t see such a deal happening with either company though — HTC is doing quite well building gorgeous Android and Windows Phone devices, and owning a mobile OS seems like a major distraction for Facebook.

HP announced weeks ago that it was giving up on webOS hardware like the Pre and TouchPad and will instead focus on licensing the software. The company plans to make another run of webOS-powered TouchPad tablets for the US, after the tablet became a hit with deal-hounds when it was discounted to $99.

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.

The advertisement tagline is “The spirit of a startup. The security of HP.”

It’s not clear whether the advertising campaign is aimed at reassuring consumers and enterprise customers about the wisdom of buying a PC from a company that’s demonstrated a decided lack of interest in the business, or at touting the value of the PC division to potential acquirers. It might be a little of both.

The company still sells two PCs every second, the ad says.

Of course, in a case of now-classic HP indecisiveness, even the announcement is hedged.

“Keep in mind that nothing has been confirmed except HP’s preference for spinning off the business,” the post says.

That is starting to seem typical for a company that announced its plans to discontinue webOS device production, then reaffirm its commitment to the webOS operating system itself (despite not having enough commitment to make devices for it), then, after seeing how well they sold at the fire sale price of $99, announce that it might start making TouchPads again, after all.

At least they didn’t post the ad on Craigslist.

via PCMag.com

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

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 company began a massive restructuring effort. The company is one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world. The company also said it would stop building hardware for its mobile operating system, webOS, and focus more on enterprise technology. Benioff himself is the chief executive of a massive enterprise company that built a market cap of around $17 billion (compared to HP’s $53 billion market cap).

On top of the mobile revolution that brought a bevy of smartphones and tablet computers into the enterprise — which was courtesy of former iPhone manufacturer Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, Benioff said — is an impending social revolution. Benioff pointed to social networking giant Facebook as one of the main drivers of a new generation of the enterprise.

“We’ve seen (foreign dictators) Mubarak fall, Gadaffi fall — it won’t be long until we see the first corporate CEO fall for the same reason,” Benioff said. “For failing to listen to its customers and to listen to employees, just like Gadaffi and Mubarak.”

Salesforce.com today unveiled a whole slew of new features for its own enterprise social network, Chatter. It added real-time chat, screen-sharing and the ability to add members from other businesses to limited Chatter groups. It’s had to compete with other socially-charged enterprise companies like enterprise social network Yammer and cloud storage provider Box.net, which were all born carrying the ideas that Web 2.0 stars like Twitter and Facebook brought to the table just a few years ago.

“Salesforce is rapidly becoming a social enterprise,” he said. “We need to move faster, and we know we need to move faster — but we can do that thanks to the public cloud.”

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,” says Caldwell, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Now that we have the core platform built, adding new platforms is straightforward for us to do. The larger vision of these new features is that we are getting to the point where we want a developer to be able to link to app.net/myapp [the URL of an application on App.net] and App.net will show the best version of their app for the device the user is on. The less end-users have to deal with the platform complexity and compatibility issues, and figuring out whether to use mobile website vs. app, the better.”

On his blog, Caldwell makes a minor apology to webOS, which wasn’t included in the new release.

“(sorry webOS),” he writes. I told you it was a minor apology.

App.net helps developers optimize their products’ online presence and provides tools to manage, monitor and promote their product. Using App.net, developers can create landing pages and widgets as well as monitor performance data.

The App.net blog has more examples and information on today’s announcement.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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 expects to become chief executive of the stand-alone PC company should it be spun off, said HP could bring back the TouchPad or offer up a different tablet at a later date. He also said the company is exploring the option of licensing out the TouchPad’s operating system WebOS.

HP first released the TouchPad at a $499 price point last month to dismal sales, which prompted the company to reduced the price by $100 the following week to spur sales. Eventually, HP decided to get out of the tablet market completely and it liquidated existing stock of the devices at a low $99 price point, which sparked renewed interest. In fact, the company recently announced that it will be producing one last run of TouchPads to meet the new demand.

However, if the company does decide to resurrect its TouchPad tablets, it’s unlikely they would remain as popular without the appealingly low price tag.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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 says it won’t abandon the suppliers completely, but it’s unclear what the company will be able to offer as recompense. The sources add that HP’s headquarters in the US still haven’t communicated to the company’s Taiwanese arm about what to do.

Production for the TouchPad Go was supposed to start at the end of this quarter.

Making amends with these suppliers will be another major expense for HP, which will likely lose hundreds of millions over the shutdown of its WebOS hardware. All of those $99 TouchPads will surely come back to bite HP, especially since the tablets have an estimated build cost of around $300. The company also spent a pretty penny on the TouchPad’s marketing campaign, which continued running days after the tablet was officially discontinued.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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 with its Android Galaxy S II phones while also dabbling in Windows Phone 7 devices.

Palm’s webOS patent portfolio may also help to protect Samsung from further legal bullying from the likes of Apple. The iPhone-maker just recently scored yet another patent win in Europe against Samsung, which could force it to stop offering its Galaxy Android phones.

We’ve asked both HP and Samsung for comment on the news and will update if we hear anything back. I don’t expect either company to acknowledge a webOS deal at this point though.

HP previously told its employees that it’s “not walking away from webOS” the day after the company killed its webOS devices. The company has discussed licensing the software to others, but at this point that seems like a tough sell when even HP couldn’t make webOS devices succeed.

Samsung was also rumored to be interesting in HP’s PC business, but sources tell Digitimes that Samsung may pass since it’s a relatively low-margin business. The addition of Wah could help Samsung to better market its own computers, which have become increasingly impressive over the past few years.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

If recent news about HP’s bumbling of webOS is giving you a headache, you may want to stop reading right now.

The company apparently gave up on a string of cool webOS devices when it announced that it would no longer build hardware for the platform, including a fully touchscreen phone, a 7-inch tablet and a netbook, according to a post by GDGT developer Aaron Draczynski.

But worry not, HP has promised that it’s still working on bringing webOS to PCs and printers — something I would wager nobody gives a damn about — reports All Things D’s Ina Fried, who spoke with webOS chief Stephen DeWitt earlier today.

Sources at HP told Draczynski that the company managed all of its product development in-house, which led to delayed design cycles and limited development resources. “By the time new devices were ready for production, some of their designs were almost half a year old or more,” he wrote. “That’s a pretty long time in the rapidly changing world of smartphones.”

HP apparently had several slab-style (without a hardware keyboard) touchscreen phones in the works. One, dubbed the “Windsor,” was supposed to launch late last year, but it was cancelled due to missed deadlines by the hardware team and a “non-competitive design.” A second slab, the “Stingray,” had better hardware — including a large screen, 8-megapixel camera, and front-facing camera — but carriers gave up on it because HP took too long to finalize its software. (Spy photos of the Stingray were spotted in the wild back in April.)

Draczynski also confirmed that Palm had a 7-inch tablet called “Opal” in the works, which was rumored way back in January. It was supposed to launch later this year as the “TouchPad Go,” according to FCC filings discovered by Engadget. Perhaps strangest of all, HP was apparently working on resurrecting Palm’s foiled Foleo project by putting webOS on a netbook. Draczynski says that HP had a special version of webOS dubbed “Dartfish” running on the tablet in the late Spring.

As for the future of webOS, DeWitt remained cagey in his conversation with Fried. He confirmed that webOS will still make its way to PCs and printers, but he declined to say when that would happen. At least there’s good news for recent Veer and TouchPad fans: DeWitt says that there will be further software updates issued to the devices (I wouldn’t wager on that lasting too long though).

He also said that HP’s Pre 3, which was announced way back in January alongside the Veer, will still launch in “very selective areas.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Following HP’s swift destruction of its webOS ecosystem last week, Microsoft stepped up on Friday to give webOS developers a new home with free Windows Phone devices, training, and tools.

Now, the company’s Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development Brandon Watson, who made the initial plea to webOS devs via Twitter, says he’s received nearly 1,000 responses to the offer.

We’ve dropped a line to Watson to see if he can offer up more information on what exactly Microsoft will give webOS migrants. Judging from the frantic pace of his Twitter stream over the weekend though (he received over 500 responses in about 22 hours), it’s clear plenty of developers are interested in taking him up on the offer.

While Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform is still struggling with sales, it’s tough to deny that the company has done a great job at wrangling developer support. WP7 has nearly 30,000 apps in its marketplace — an impressive figure given that the company started from scratch when the platform launched last fall. Personalities like Watson have also helped Microsoft solidify developer relations — something that Palm and HP never managed to accomplish with webOS. Watson went as far as to put his personal cellphone number on Twitter last year to discuss Windows Phone development.

Microsoft still has a ways to go with Windows Phone. It’s playing catch-up with Apple’s 500,000 iOS apps and Android’s 250,000 apps, and device sales haven’t been strong enough to give Windows Phone any significant market share. That could all change, though, with the release of Mango, Windows Phone 7′s first big update, as well as new devices this fall, including Nokia’s first flagship Windows Phone.