HP is exiting the hardware business, and the PSG group that also houses webOS would be spun off shortly. A lot of rumors and speculations have been flying around wrt to the future of WebOS. During the sell-out news HP hadn’t announced any long term plan for the beleaguered mobile OS that once raised hopes of taking no 3 spot after Android and iOS. Rumors of Samsung or other mobile manufacturers being interested in webOS are still on, and in-midst of the confusion, HP has shifted the WebOS under a new unit.
In what looks like an attempt to nurture webOS and grow it with much more resources, HP has sent out internal memos announcing that the webOS team would move to ‘Office of Strategy and Technology’ under Shane Robison (EVP, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer.) The wordings of the memo published by PreCentral shows that HP isn’t 100% sure of what to do with webOS – ‘investigating the best ways to leverage webOS software and grow its applications environment.’
Given that the OS&T division at HP is also working on their cloud offering, there might be synergies with webOS that would help the mobile platform grow. At this point, it looks unlikely that HP is planning to make any quick moves with webOS, they have enough webOS products out in consumer hands to get real world feedback for the next few months. But when and how would we see webOS products in the market remains a question.
