HP's new WebOS smartphones, tablets in pictures
HP has updated the mobile operating system acquired from Palm and unleashed two new smartphones.
Just when we thought the $99 Hewlett-Packard TouchPad was gone forever, the tablet that refuses to die is coming back for one last sale, according to online reports. A limited quantity of refurbished TouchPads will reportedly go on sale at HP's eBay Store starting at 6 p.m. US Central Time (7 p.m. Eastern) on Sunday, December 11.
The future of webOS has been hazy since HP announced in August that it will discontinue its webOS line of devices. The HP Veer 4G faded into oblivion, but the HP TouchPad has enjoyed numerous fire sales since the announcement. Today, HP announced that webOS will live on as an open source platform.
HP announced today that it will "contribute" its webOS operating system to the <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/opensource/">open source</a> community.
A little birdie (The Verge) revealed earlier today that HP's new CEO Meg Whitman had scheduled an all-hands meeting for the WebOS crew. The news sparked speculation that HP had perhaps found a suitor for the mobile platform, but those predictions turned up false.
Were you one of the lucky Australian consumers to get your hands on HP's TouchPad tablet for $98 yesterday?
The leaked details on HP and Palm's WebOS tablet keep on coming, though HP has said we haven't seen everything yet.
Hewlett-Packard just raised the ante in the smartphone wars by purchasing Palm, bringing to the table its standing as the world's largest PC maker and potentially bringing on a new era of WebOS devices. The future is still cloudy for the union of the ailing Palm and the mighty HP, but here are five ways HP can make the best of its $1.2 billion buy:
The fall of Palm from groundbreaking innovator of handheld PDA's, to ailing developer of capable-but-waning smartphones is complete with the announcement that HP will acquire Palm to the tune of US$1.2 billion. The primary asset of Palm is the WebOS mobile platform--an asset that puts HP in a strong position to create a tablet device to compete with Apple's iPad.
Yesterday's statement from Palm's CEO, lamenting how Motorola's Droid beat the Palm Pre into Verizon stores, I was reminded of a famous Marlon Brando line from "On the Waterfront." Many people know the words, even of they don't know they come from a 1954 motion picture.
Palm has stayed very quiet since its releases of the Palm Pre and Pixi devices this summer, which debuted the WebOS that was at one point seen as a key rival to Apple's iPhone.