I'm not sure I understand the point of webOS. If Android is maturing quickly and free-as-in-speech, why wouldn't HP simply adopt that?
I can understand Apple carving out their own proprietary path, because of their legions of fans and widely accepted interface design patterns. I can also understand Microsoft putting Windows 7 on tablets (because people want to run MS applications that already exist). But why would I want webOS? Are they trying to be like Apple and blaze an entirely new trail?
It seems like it would have been smarter for HP to go with Android. The cost surely would have been cheaper and the product would have had a greater chance at gaining acceptance.
The point is to control your own destiny. HP has been stuck behind MS for the past 20 years. They couldn't innovate on hardware w/o MS.
This would just trade one devil for another devil. Even though Android is open source, development happens in isolation. Even with HoneyComb Google only gave Moto access. So Samsung, LG, HTC, Accer -- no Honeycomb for you yet. Moto gets special treatment.
If you're HP do you want to get in bed with a company who may decide that Motorola or Dell or Lenovo is the "preferred" partner? Do you want to have to throttle your development (or develop on an old version of Android) to introduce your latest HW innovation.
HP can finally own the full stack... ala Apple. And honestly, I think HP looks at what Apple has done and thinks, "We can do a lot of what they do. Maybe without the style -- but enough to put us beyond all of the Android clones".
Good luck to them, but contrast HP with Nokia. Unless they execute extremely well on the OS, store, dev tools, and price they will be releasing a memo like this eventually http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2195520
Presumably because HP wants to control their own fate. They've seen what happened to their PC division in the race-to-the-bottom Windows world, why would they want to sign up to do that all over again with the same razor thin margins and anemic profits that every Android hardware vendor other than HTC is experiencing?
WebOS gives them a real differentiator and a chance to build an ecosystem they can grow and control, rather than just half-assing it with Android re-skin #17.
I can understand Apple carving out their own proprietary path, because of their legions of fans and widely accepted interface design patterns. I can also understand Microsoft putting Windows 7 on tablets (because people want to run MS applications that already exist). But why would I want webOS? Are they trying to be like Apple and blaze an entirely new trail?
It seems like it would have been smarter for HP to go with Android. The cost surely would have been cheaper and the product would have had a greater chance at gaining acceptance.