And then there were four

By on Aug 18, 2011 at 5:00 PM
Featured August 18, 2011

When Hewlett-Packard announced in April of 2010 that it planned to acquire Palm for $1.2 billion, I sent the following email to a friend on the software team at Palm: “Congrats on the stay of execution, buddy. I give it 18 months.” Of course I was jabbing him and later went on to offer more sincere congratulations in subsequent emails, but as they say, many a word of truth is spoken in jest. Here we are less than 16 short months after HP’s announcement, and webOS is no more. Well, to be fair, HP hasn’t yet said exactly what it will do with webOS: “HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.” Read on for my thoughts.

As someone who has been a fairly vocal fan of webOS since it was unveiled at CES in 2009, I’m hurting right now. I’ll admit it. I have several friends who moved over to HP from Palm following the acquisition, and I’m hurting for them. Whether or not their jobs may be in jeopardy, I don’t know. Luckily, each one is brilliant and I am supremely confident that they will land in even better roles should they leave HP on their own or due to layoffs. I’m hurting because webOS was their baby, and when HP — the world’s No. 1 PC vendor — swooped in and purchased Palm, the sky was the limit. New phones… New tablets… WebOS on desktop computers and notebooks… It was the dawn of the webOS era. But no longer.

I’m also hurting because I truly did enjoy using webOS. As I’ve said in the past, iOS revolutionized the smartphone OS by placing apps at the center of the user experience. WebOS took this concept a step further by placing the task manager, or the apps that are currently in use, at the center of the user experience. Palm’s card system was brilliant, and it changed the way people accessed commonly used apps. WebOS was also gorgeous to look at, and with the right hardware — I was lucky enough to spend a few weeks with the Pre3 recently — it’s also remarkably fluid. I am truly going to miss it.

In the end, however, I think the real reason I’m hurting boils down to a single, ultimate truth: HP was right to kill off webOS.

Sad though it may be, webOS never stood a chance. The Pre’s unveiling was immediately eclipsed by the iPhone 3G, and by the time HP got to it, it was far too late. Now, there are four: Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Symbian is dead, webOS is dead and the rest are fighting a losing battle, it would seem. Aside from GridOS, of course.

Apple and Google are the clear leaders right now, but each faces challenges. RIM is on the ropes, though a massive 225-carrier BlackBerry 7 launch appears likely to carry the wounded vendor forward as it prepares its first wave of next-generation QNX-powered smartphones. Microsoft stumbled out of the gate with Windows Phone, but it found itself an ideal partner in Nokia and both companies are hungry to attack the market beginning later this year. It really is anyone’s game, and though Apple’s iOS currently owns the lion’s share of smartphone profits and Google’s Android currently owns the lion’s share of smartphone sales, no one knows what the future might hold.

After all, nothing lasts forever… Just ask Palm.

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  • http://twitter.com/EwanTouma Ewan Touma

    I told you a year ago and I’ll tell you all again. There is NO tablet market, there is only an iPad market. The market will follow the same way the MP3 market did where everyone tried but ultimately there was only the iPod.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=96800523 Wayne Bobo

    Im  sorry but they had no business buying Palm to just slap their name on WebOS and sell it right back off…bad move HP

  • Anonymous

    To be fair, there never were really five. WebOS was written about a lot, talked about a lot, hyped about a lot. Used? Not a lot. Ever. 

  • Anonymous

    Place your bets! Who gets dibs on the patents: Google, MS, or Apple?

  • Anonymous

    YOu really think it’s anyone’s game right now? we have 8 more months before 50% of the entire US market has smartphones. That’s Saturation–and then the inevitable data plan price decreases to push smartphone adoption to 80%.

    there is yet a killer app for Windows Phone. Is Office better than QuickOffice? Better than Pages? Nope.

  • Anonymous

    WebOS had no chance because of a whole laundry list of bad marketing decisions by Palm. The launch date did not help. However, what also did not help was the lack of app support, only being on Sprint for six months, and a horrible ad campaign. I had the phone. It worked well but after a year it had only 4,000 apps. I’m sure there was a dozen other things they could have done but these were the ones I noticed.

  • Anonymous

    webOS card system was brilliant

  • Fastwalking

    HP sucks – they have never stuck with a product to see it through – how the heck do they stay in businiess??? another major blunder, another 1.2 billion down the drain.   I bought an HP 7135 ten years ago for about $1,800 – the next big thing.  Two months later HP pulls the plug on it and those who bought were left in the cold.  Just like many of their so called printers.

    Bottom line – HP cannot be trusted – ever.   They do not stand behind anything they make and they are completely directionless.   DON”T  BUY  HP

  • Guest

    One of the problems Palm had as a standalone was terrible hardware design.  While with HP they got significantly more channel access, they had a partner with similarly uninspiring hardware design. 

    If Pre3 had been at least Samsung quality in industrial design, and tablet had closely matched iPad2 in design…it could have, not would have…made a difference.iOS is great. Android matches it in functionality, but has a terrible task manager problem. But Apple still completely leads the pack in industrial design. That, plus brand mindshare and leading the product introduction cycle, is why they are killing it.  Not iOS vs. WebOS.

  • http://twitter.com/Vision77 Vision77

    3 words for HP if they totally kill of webOS: You Stupid Fux…….

    • Anonymous

      Sorry Vision, I have to say that “we’re (the consumer) the stupid fux”.  We drive the market… if we don’t buy the product then we alone are to blame.  But I do understand your frustration… the product is awesome, but was born in a jaded society.

  • Anonymous

    Honestly, with a strong hardware partner (or hardware partners) giving it scale and backing I see no reason why it would not have quite significant success. The platform’s main problem was always that neither Palm nor HP ever had the capacity to build it up as a single-device platform a la iOS. Indeed, with Samsung, HTC, LG and even SE behind it (and all of these companies ought to presently be looking for Android alternatives to be safer from the Googlorola decision), I see no reason why WebOS would not be able to easily surpass RIM – it’s a much more elegant, innovative mobile OS.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_V7JLAS5ZNNJEAWEBFHJYOJDQLA Kris Sampson

    I just paíd $22.85 for an íPad 2-64GB and my girlfriend loves her her Canon EOS Rebel Camera that we got for $38.78 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $625 which only cost me $62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, CentHûb.côm

  • Anonymous

    This whole thing really build down to HP as a hardware company unable to exist in the newly disruption market that Apple created with the iPad.

    HP had no trouble competing with $2000+ unibody notebooks that came from Cupertino. Their retail presence made it easy for them to slap together cheap hardware and sell them to consumers who knew they needed a computer but wouldn’t spend premium money to get one.

    They simply can’t compete when consumers don’t *need* a tablet, they *want* an iPad. What’s worse is that even if they did want any old tablet, there isn’t a massive chasm in price between the premium products that Apple sells and HP’s slower, less premium device without the developer support.

    HP does great when the market demands something at half the price and build quality isn’t a deciding factor, but that’s not the new mobile computing marketplace. They’re right to exit the market and move into enterprise.

    It’s a pity because WebOS was good. I’d like to see someone like HTC or Samsung (or both) adopt it and go head to head with Googarola.

    • Anonymous

      Competing with the $2000 unibody notebooks? HP never really competed with them. HP sold lots of units but that was hardly competing. HP’s PC business turns over about $40Bn per year and makes about 5-6% profit margins. Apple sells about 27% of the units HP did in 2010 (15M vs. 56M) but that makes Apple about 45% of the the revenue and about 2x the profit.

      It’s these kind of numbers that the board, Leo and the analysts are looking at that says HP cannot “compete”, at least not at a level of financial performance acceptable to the board and the markets.
      PGS is the least profitable (by % margin) division of HP and it is a drag on the rest of the business. When 32% of your revenue generates only 16% of the net income, you know it is not a great long-term business.

  • CMC

    Big fail on RIM for not buying Palm when they had the chance.  Great OS that could have helped both firms out tremendously.  Missed opportunity from RIM’s part.  Sad for Palm — the inventor of the original pda, then smartphone.

  • Racer416

    Imagine what could have been had RIM bought Palm instead of QNX. They would have bought a better platform to transition BB OS 6 and Palm would still be around today. If only there were more forward thinking leaders today…

  • Anonymous

    Sorry but I totaled disagree, I don’t think that webOS is dead, there is simply too much at stake to kill off probably the best mobile device operating system. Google made sure of webOS staying alive after they bought Motorola mobility, which leaves companies like HTC, Samsung, and LG without an OS, yes they can still license android, but for how long, I believe in no less than a week from today there will be an announcement either that HP will license the webOS software or that someone will buy webOS and its Palm Patents. 
    The mobile hardware vendors just have too much to lose.
    If I were Amazon, I would buy it and license it out. Amazon has the cloud, music, ebooks, movies and TV series, they could make webOS the next android but better. Wake up Amazon, Yahoo or Facebook, you have a golden opportunity.

  • Sanctus Martinus Turonensis

    Google ought to do RIM a favor and buy them out. That will pretty much ensure Android’s dominance forever.

  • http://www.mobileinquirer.com Mobile News

    Never had a chance to play with WebOS but hear it was robust.

  • Skeedaddy

    Palm was dead after they produced the Treo 650. I was a diehard Palm user but after they sold the defective Treo 650 that both Palm and Verizon knew about, I switched to the iPhone and never looked back. Everyone was so frustrated that they bailed to iPhone or Blackberry. Palm never had a chance no matter who owned them. You can have the best thing since sliced bread, but once you piss off a customer, it is very hard to get them back. Happy iPhone and Blackberry users only created more of the same. And then Android got what was left. RIP Palm

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