[LizardWiz]

Beyond your personal preference, the actual evidence for this statement is? ?????

I have the same evidence as everone else, the fact that Amazon has been reported as looking into buying webOS for the past 2 months (even though everyone said that was just unfounded rumor), the fact that they were reported to be reviewing the Palm patents 3 days ago (which once again was dicarded as merely imaginative conjecture), then followed up by this sudden announcement of an Amazon mobile phone.

I'd say the timing of the events certainly lends itself to the credibility of the aforementioned rumors, hence, the usage of the word "probably"...

[Grabber5.0]

In other words, the only evidence anyone has is the same -- rumors, speculation, and opinions. :-)

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities

[ilovedessert]

You don't have to root to backup. I use the app MyBackupPro.

Hi & Thanks ...

Titanium kept telling me I had to root...so thank you will try your recommendation today!

BTW my phone is currently bricked the new Android update came and my phone locked into a loop cycle of the sprint start up screen the Samsung start up screen and it just keeps going back to the Sprint start up screen....I pulled the battery for 3 hours nothing it did this for about 10 hours and I got fed up and yelled at Sprint...I'm going there today!

I tried a soft reset but the keys that it tells you to push wouldn't respond!

Take care,

jay

[All4fun]

This whole buying webOS to have their own OS to “do as they please” makes absolutely no sense. With the fork of Android that they have and use now, they can do whatever they want however they want in the direction that they want.

Don't forget that Amazon has their own Android market that is actually quite successful. The Kindle Fire doesn't (at least stock) have access to Google's Android Market, so Amazon is already limiting its users to their ecosystem.

If Amazon buys webOS, it'd be for protection alone, not for anything more or less. That's my assumption, anyways.

I tend to agree. I think if Amazon buys WebOS it's an IP bargaining chip move. In large corporations, if someone infringes the other guy, they work hard to stay out of court and usually offer up a cross-license to make the threat of an infringement suit vanish. Everyone walks away with something, and they stay out of (expensive) court.

~~~

[ilovedessert]

You don't have to root to backup. I use the app MyBackupPro.

Hi, thank you...I installed MyBackUpPro and it's working right now...t


thanks again, take care, Jay

[errsta]

hope this week brings some news.

[Swedish Berserk]

hope this week brings some news.

Yeah me too. When is HP going to announce something was it this week?

[cgk]

I could be wrong about this (I am not an accountant) but from what I can see in the HP Q4 results, they have written down the value of WebOS and the IP from 1.2 billion to only $400 million.

At that stage, does it then become cheaper to cancel it, than invest billions trying to bring it back?

[errsta]

I could be wrong about this (I am not an accountant) but from what I can see in the HP Q4 results, they have written down the value of WebOS and the IP from 1.2 billion to only $400 million.

At that stage, does it then become cheaper to cancel it, than invest billions trying to bring it back?

HP's objective as a company, it would be cheaper to cancel it.

They appear to want to focus (understandably) on higher margin enterprise offerings.

[dignitary]

HP wasted billions on Palm and webOS | The Verge

This does not bode well.

[dignitary]

I wouldn't be surprised if that report didn't just become the final death knell for the OS as we know it. You don't fly through 2.85B (see The Verge article) and decide that throwing a few more billion at it is a suitable answer.

Let's put it another way: They've dug a negative 2.85B hole webOS would have to come out of--on top of additional investment--before it can break even. Think about that for a moment.

Microsoft was able to do it with the original Xbox because it had tens of billions in cash--not even talking market cap--hanging out doing nothing and it truly doubled-down to break into the industry. (It has 55B in cash right now on a market cap of 250B and has always carried significant cash reserves for just this purpose.)

HP has 12.95B in cash on a market cap of 55B as of Jul 31, 2011. A 2.85B hit hurts like hell.

[eblade]

I'm no financial wizard, but if I'm not mistaken, that number seems to roughly equal the purchase of Palm, the charge for writing off the hardware business, and the current writedown in value of 800M... so.. yeah.. lights are seeming a little dim right now.

[All4fun]

I wouldn't be surprised if that report didn't just become the final death knell for the OS as we know it. You don't fly through 2.85B (see The Verge article) and decide that throwing a few more billion at it is a suitable answer.

Let's put it another way: They've dug a negative 2.85B hole webOS would have to come out of--on top of additional investment--before it can break even. Think about that for a moment.

Microsoft was able to do it with the original Xbox because it had tens of billions in cash--not even talking market cap--hanging out doing nothing and it truly doubled-down to break into the industry. (It has 55B in cash right now on a market cap of 250B and has always carried significant cash reserves for just this purpose.)

HP has 12.95B in cash on a market cap of 55B as of Jul 31, 2011. A 2.85B hit hurts like hell.

HP needs to quit buying up companies... they don't seem to be able to capitalize on buy-outs they have made. Unfortunately for us, Palm is another instance of that bad track record.

~~~