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SAN JOSE,
Calif. — Hewlett-Packard Co. will not sell the
remnants of its Palm acquisition, instead making the
webOS mobile operating system available to developers as
an open-source platform.
HP CEO
Meg Whitman has been contemplating the fate of webOS,
which powered the Palo Alto, Calif., tech giant’s
short-lived foray into the tablet business with the
TouchPad, since taking over the company in September. On
Friday, the company announced that it would release the
technology to the open-source community.
“WebOS
is the only platform designed from the ground up to be
mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” Whitman said in
the news release. “By contributing this innovation, HP
unleashes the creativity of the open source community to
advance a new generation of applications and devices.”
Hewlett-Packard
purchased Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm — which became
famous for electronic organizers that were, in effect,
early smartphones without the phone — for $1.2 billion
in 2010. Since then, however, HP has failed to develop
any webOS-based products that made a dent in the mobile
market.
The
TouchPad tablet was the company’s biggest launch using
webOS, but the company decided to end the product line
two months after its launch, then proceeded to sell of
most of it inventory at a loss, one of the final moves
by former CEO Leo Apotheker before he was shown the door
by HP in favor of Whitman.
The
company said last month that it had written off $3.3
billion in losses for the fiscal year related to webOS
and the TouchPad.
Hewlett-Packard
did not announce any more layoffs surrounding the
change, but the webOS division will likely get smaller
as the company looks to independent developers to
maintain the platform.
“HP
will make the underlying code of webOS available under
an open source license. Developers, partners, HP
engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver
ongoing enhancements and new versions into the
marketplace,” the company’s announcement stated.
The
company said Sept. 20 that it has begun laying off
workers while winding down the production of tablets and
smartphones using webOS. A company spokesman at the time
declined to say how many layoffs were planned, but the
tech blog All Things D reported that up to 525 workers
were on their way out.
Whitman
has made a series of moves since taking over HP, putting
aside Apotheker’s decision to investigate spinning off
the company’s personal-computer business —
Hewlett-Packard is the world’s No. 1 PC company —
and integrating British software company Autonomy,
acquired by her predecessor for a much-maligned $10.4
billion.
Whitman
said during the company’s last earnings report
conference call in October that she was still mulling
the fate of webOS, but did say she wanted HP to pare
down its product line.
“HP
tries to do a lot of things,” she said, “(but) I am
a big believer in doing a small number of things really
well.”
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