HP to sell WebOS:
On the advice of their bank; Bank of America Hewlett Packard are looking to offload there WebOS operating system to recoup some of the money they ploughed into the tablet and smartphone market.
A loss non-leader:
Unfortunately despite some good patents in the package they will almost certainly be set to lose out on a pretty hefty amount of money.
HP spent around $1.2 billion on the Palm O/S only last year, and is set to sell at a figure of around “hundred of millions”
Vultures include:
Various companies are tipped to be included as potential buyers of the operating system and include:
Oracle, IBM, RIM, Amazon and Intel.
Kindle Fire to get new O/S?
With Amazon releasing there first tablet on the Android O/S could it be possible that they wish to develop there own operating system to compete long term with Apple and Google now that they have there own app store and other services rolled out and tied to the Kindle Fire?
A spokesperson for HP states rather elusively:
“We are exploring ways to optimize the webOS software.”
With HP’s Todd Bradley, VP of personal systems stating that HP are looking to:
“determine how we’ll best utilise webOS and those great software assets that we have”.
Assuming this means get it on the open market and sell, we see no reason why it would not sell to one of the current technology vendors, the question would always be how much of a loss would be acceptable?
HP lost or found?
Will HP’s decision to move much more into software and enterprise hardware such as servers, storage and networking help them compete with IBM and Oracle and be there saving grace or have they shifted into a sector that is both highly competitive and also potentially less lucrative if you yet again don’t cut the mustard when playing with the big boys?
Anthony Munns