[akitayo]

IMHO HP will not go alone this time . They will make an alliance a joint venture company with one or two partners. It will reduce risk and dollars amounts on investement, expenses.

ALTERNATIVE1 :
Samsung/HTC/Sony or any great hardware manufacturer.
HP for the webOS software.


ALTERNATIVE 2:

Samsung/HTC/Sony or any great hardware manufacturer.
Amazon for the ecosystem.
HP for the webOS software.

If this alternative happens then Amazon will come with a webos smartphone for 2012 and a webos tablet.

ALTERNATIVE 3:
HP just found a cheaper part and componets supplier in Korea, Japan or Taiwan who don´t work with Apple at all and are coming with the 2.0 tablet .

DEVICES SHOWTIME for any of the alternatives:CES 2012 Jan 10-13th, 2012 Las Vegas.

[fxspec06]

According to OP's transcript, "work on innovative solutions that gonna be quite positive" is clearly under the topic of webOS.


-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities

You still missing my point.. yes it's under the topic of webOS, but they're going to take actions that benefit themselves. If that means reviving webOS then so be it, but it also could mean not reviving it. HP cares about their own wealth, webOS or not.

[matchqq]

You still missing my point.. yes it's under the topic of webOS, but they're going to take actions that benefit themselves. If that means reviving webOS then so be it, but it also could mean not reviving it. HP cares about their own wealth, webOS or not.

i didn't say anything about if HP cares about our webOS users or not. I just plainly judged from OP's transcript and suggested what it means. HP already lost too much money from webOS. Now we know Meg sees the potential of webOS. Who knows if they are not planning on new strategy to start recoup from the investment on webOS?


-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities

[Swedish Berserk]

I really hope they will continue with webOS development and start producing some new tablets and smartphones. But the competition is really hard so they need to get back into the game fast.

[Midway99]

At least it shows that Meg knows the potential of webOS.

She is a conservative though, I don't think she likes spending money, no matter how good this "thing" is.

that makes no sense. So far she is saying all the right things for HP and webOS and what does her being a conservative have to do with anything.

[ursula]

While fxspec06 makes a great point, I don't think Meg is dumb enough to think putting it on printers (where nobody really cares what is on that tiny screen) is considered "quite positive". Selling it isn't positive for HP considering they would take a huge loss. Stripping wouldn't be positive either, because literally what is positive about it?

No, they aren't working to make the PreCentral community happy, that's blatantly obvious. However, she said "We didn't give WebOS a chance." which leads me to believe the only positive thing that could come out of this is for devices start being produced and money being pumped into the developer support.

But honestly, even if they do resurrect WebOS, it's not going to be a fast process.


Oh, also, she could be feeding everyone BS to put her and HP in a good light, and then quietly release a statement saying something about how WebOS is great but it's not in HP's best interest to continue development. Again, that would be a waste of money but it's not the first time a company has accepted defeat and moved on regardless of the money invested (it's not like HP is going bankrupt...)

[ursula]

IMHO HP will not go alone this time . They will make an alliance a joint venture company with one or two partners. It will reduce risk and dollars amounts on investement, expenses.

...

ALTERNATIVE 3:
HP just found a cheaper part and componets supplier in Korea, Japan or Taiwan who don´t work with Apple at all and are coming with the 2.0 tablet .

DEVICES SHOWTIME for any of the alternatives:CES 2012 Jan 10-13th, 2012 Las Vegas.

It takes atleast a year to design and perfect a product that is ready for consumer use, so do you really think HP (who has no clue what they are doing with WebOS) is using money on a platform with the most unstable/uncertain future?

When HP bought Palm, the TouchPad was most likely in development by Palm and HP just took it from there.

And completely forget the first two... HTC released statements a couple months ago blatantly saying no to buying WebOS, so why would they produce hardware? Samsung was 99% no, Sony is looking to buy Ericson, and Amazon just launched Kindle Fire... Literally no.

I wish HP would scream they have already produced 50 new devices with quad core processors and the whole "we might kill WebOS" thing was a joke, but it's not going to happen. WebOS is wounded severely and it would take a miracle to give it a respectful rebirth.

[Midway99]

You still missing my point.. yes it's under the topic of webOS, but they're going to take actions that benefit themselves. If that means reviving webOS then so be it, but it also could mean not reviving it. HP cares about their own wealth, webOS or not.

agree. While the folks that visit precentral are big webOS fans, at the end of the day, HP must look out for HP and it's shareholders. Leo took their market cap from $96 billion to $44 billion and it needs to get back to the correct +$90 billion market.

make new webOS devices to please some and cost HP another X will get Meg walked out the door faster then Leo did. I think more then anything, Meg thinks Leo cut bait too soon on v1, that's all. Now, they are assessing if it's too costly to ramp back up for tablets (I think phones are out from HP), partner with someone on the phones/tablets while HP's focuses on the ecosystem (think public cloud) and printers, or kill it. The one thing they won't do is bring it back based on emotion - that's a great way to kill your business.

It's obvious more people dislike webOS devices than like them as they have NEVER been successful (sans the fire sale). All IMO of course.

[johncc]

....
It's obvious more people dislike webOS devices then like them as they have NEVER been successful (sans the fire sale). All IMO of course.

How do you figure that people dislike webOS devices. What is obvious to me is that practically nobody has heard of webOS due to the incompetent marketing of webOS devices by HP. Their most successful marketing exercise was the firesale of Touchpads.

[eblade]

Well, let's consider this objectively -- who currently makes phones and/or tablets, with Qualcomm CPUs? (and it seems like we can be reasonably certain that webOS is in some state of functioning on other architectures, considering that it's probably about as difficult as a kernel recompile if all your hardware is supported)

A quick search on Qualcomm's site shows us.. HTC, Samsung, and LG. Not exactly the heavyweights of the cellular industry, but at least they aren't no-names.

Without a functioning hardware dept and R&D, if there's going to be anything, it's going to have to be largely designed and produced by a third party. It'll take a long time to get R&D and such back under HP, especially for one reason -- you've already fired the entire hardware department, so who's going to want to work for you in the new version of that?

Anyway, as I was saying, if there's going to be anything in 2012, then it's going to have to be something that someone else has already designed, or at least very similar to something else someone has already designed -- similar enough to be able to get through FCC licensing in a breeze. Unless it's something that doesn't have cellular, which almost doesn't even make sense -- you've already got a great infrastructure built for having a phone device and a seperate tablet, just enable PAN on the tablet, and use the phones for internet access. But don't try to pull that "webOS phone only" crap -- if the phones are good, we'll use the phones - we don't need to be tied to them.

[Midway99]

How do you figure that people dislike webOS devices. What is obvious to me is that practically nobody has heard of webOS due to the incompetent marketing of webOS devices by HP. Their most successful marketing exercise was the firesale of Touchpads.

really? how well did ALL of them sell when released? not so good if I recall. How well did the Veer do? Pre2? TouchPad (pre firesale). Just because we all love one or more of the devices doesn't mean they were successful from a commercial standpoint (making money). Heck, the Pre3 didn't even see the light of day.


So it was incompetent people (outside the webOS community) that failed the devices not once, but twice. If only the right people had owned, managed and marketed webOS, then it would be successful. Well, no **** - that's the case for pretty much anything ever released. In the end, I think it was not given a chance from Leo and this all falls on him. I believe he wanted to fast track the changes at HP and turn a 72 year old iconic world company into a services and software company over night. Guy was the worst CEO hire ever (yes, the board is to blame for that one.) Leo killed webOS, no one else.

[ursula]

really? how well did ALL of them sell when released? not so good if I recall. How well did the Veer do? Pre2? TouchPad (pre firesale). Just because we all love one or more of the devices doesn't mean they were successful from a commercial standpoint (making money). Heck, the Pre3 didn't even see the light of day.


So it was incompetent people (outside the webOS community) that failed the devices not once, but twice. If only the right people had owned, managed and marketed webOS, then it would be successful. Well, no **** - that's the case for pretty much anything ever released. In the end, I think it was not given a chance from Leo and this all falls on him. I believe he wanted to fast track the changes at HP and turn a 72 year old iconic world company into a services and software company over night. Guy was the worst CEO hire ever (yes, the board is to blame for that one.) Leo killed webOS, no one else.

They didn't sell well because ~nobody knew, or gave a s*** about Palm at the time~ and ~who's phone is the average consumer going to buy? Palm's, who had at the time a mostly large business following, or Apple who has a complete product line featuring the envied Mac series, iPod, and then the iPhone (3G possibly)?~ the answer is iPhone, duh.

[johncc]

really? how well did ALL of them sell when released? not so good if I recall. How well did the Veer do? Pre2? TouchPad (pre firesale). Just because we all love one or more of the devices doesn't mean they were successful from a commercial standpoint (making money). Heck, the Pre3 didn't even see the light of day.


So it was incompetent people (outside the webOS community) that failed the devices not once, but twice. If only the right people had owned, managed and marketed webOS, then it would be successful. Well, no **** - that's the case for pretty much anything ever released. In the end, I think it was not given a chance from Leo and this all falls on him. I believe he wanted to fast track the changes at HP and turn a 72 year old iconic world company into a services and software company over night. Guy was the worst CEO hire ever (yes, the board is to blame for that one.) Leo killed webOS, no one else.

None of that says that people dislike webOS. In fact there's plenty of evidence from new Touchpad owners that just about anybody that is exposed to it likes/loves it.

[jpash549]

WebOS is a vague term as used by HP. They had something they called webOS prePalm The HPdm-4010us tablet QuickWeb system is listed as version 3.1 and references some 20 open source licenses. The HP ad calls it webOS and like the HP Touchpad it is apparently linux based.Sure the tablet weighs 3.5 pounds, has an attached keyboard and no touchscreen. Next year tablets with touchscreens and detachable keyboards will be widely available if the public has a demand. Will they qualify for discussion in Mobile Nations forums? HP will have to cover this market as well as the printer and iPad like devices- phones too if they can find a partner. Coexisting with Google and Microsoft may be a problem.

[Rockbeast]

... I like to compare the life of the Touchpad to a guy going fishing. If after 10 minutes he pulls up his rods and goes home, claiming the fish just weren't biting, isn't a very good fisherman. Again, if Meg really said that then she realizes Leo sucked at fishing. Hopefully, she'll throw the rods back in the water and see what bites. Meg, change bait and your location on the lake a few times before calling it quits.

ET

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities

10 minutes is often WAY too short for successful fishing. You never know for sure, if the fish will bite early, later, or at night when you can't believe how long you've been waiting and are wondering why you are even out there...The same could be true of putting webOS out there. Staying 'connected' to the line, waiting for the moment.

I remember fishing on Shoshoni Lake in Yellowstone National Park with my Father and two other friends. We fished for about 3 hours with no bites. At sunset, all four of us caught a fish, and one guy caught a second, in the span of 5 minutes. We stayed in the game until the moment was right. We might not have known if the moment would come before we had to pack it up and give it up for the night. But it did. And I would like to see webOS stay in the game until the moment comes. By the way, those 5 fish were 16 to 24 inches...and they tasted awesome baked over a campfire by the light of the moon! Good times...good times.

[eblade]

There's a bit of a difference between fishing and selling, though. Fishing is a lot of waiting for the right people to come along. Selling is finding the right people, and convincing them that the product is right for them.

On the Engineering side, they really should/need to do some major improvements. I love what we have, but we need a lot more of it. As a developer, there are so many more things that I could do, if the abilities weren't all locked down. If I had better documentation and samples. And to not put the blame entirely on the people who are busting their ***** off at Palm, also if I had paid more attention in math in school, and if I were a better GUI designer, if I knew more JavaScript. I know C better than I know JavaScript, but I can't even understand how to get a native program to work, because.. docs.

If we as developers, could write proper replacements for the existing apps, if we could access the data that the palm apps get to access, if we could do various "mashups" with all the various data that is available, if we could control the system volume, the screen state, if we could allow the user to authorize an app to access all the system services that right now only Palm can use .. (individually, not all at once)

If the system could download files from secure websites, then Facebook would work properly for the most part, my GVoice app could directly access your voicemails . . if the Facebook app didn't launch you to the browser for everything it doesn't support, because it actually supported everything .. (the Android facebook app does the same thing, so does the Pre facebook app) if Exhibition and Just Type programs defaulted to on .. if Exhibition mode could be disabled. . . .

Just poking at the top apps in the iPod catalog right now.

TurboScan - take a picture of something, it converts it to PDF or some such, based on what area looks like paper. possible in webOS, but well beyond my ability. Also, our TouchPad cameras are complete crap, so it's not really useful except for phones.

Voice Actions - while the basic parts of the program could be easily implemented (capturing the voice data), I'd guess that you'd have to go to native code to actually interpret that data into something useful. Again, possible app. I've tried the voice recognition programs in Android, and they are all complete junk, but that may be because of microphone difficulties in TouchPad CM7.

Splashtop - yay! we have that! but it's not really feature parity to the other versions, and they keep promising us that, but there has only been one update, and that wasn't obvious what it did.

Craigslist - there are at least 3 craigslist apps in our catalog

Flashlight - well, we have to resort to Preware for that, because our apps can't control the light.

About 20 different FatBooth type apps - believed to be possible without native code, however, the math is beyond me. I don't know if the APIs required actually work or not, or if all of them are present, because I don't really know what would need to be done. If they -are- present, it's only on newer softwares. That much I do know. However, there's not a way to save the data out to a file once you have it.

Replacement/Alternate Keyboard Apps - this is a staple on both Apple and Google's stores. Not possible in webOS, except via Homebrew, and even at that, it's proven rather difficult considering the number of people who've researched it and moved on.

Texts from Last Night - hey, someone should go through and make an app template for all these sorts of sites, and get it out there.

Lightsaber - we have two of them. Our current system software on the TouchPad renders them almost but not completely broken.

Barcode Scanner - HP supplies one of their own in the app catalog! Again, it's useless on TouchPad, due to the hardware. I hear it works great on phones.

Checkbook - another win for webOS, we already have this program. Or at least a program with a similar name that does the same thing.

Mint.com - redirection problems prevent us from writing a scraper-type app, they provide no public API, and they haven't written a version for webOS.

Games, Games, Games - plenty of Games on all platforms. Nothing really new on webOS though, not in the last year. It's like the whole of known Game developers jumped ship before the TouchPad even came out, or very shortly thereafter. Unreal would probably run fantastically on the TouchPad and Pre3, but it's pretty unlikely that any particular dev studio would ever try to port the engine to run on webOS, SO that needs to be coordinated with Epic. (if I had instructions I could follow on how to get basic applications built natively, or even command line programs, I could probably do a large part of the work involved with that, but again, no studio is going to pay me to do it)

Sleep Machines and Alarm Clocks -- oh, we can't control the volume! If the user doesn't leave the volume at max, we can't do a damn thing with it.

Period Tracker Deluxe -- well, we have an app for that. It's not "Deluxe", though. ha. ha.

GarageBand - i have no idea if this is possible.

Guitar Tuner - theoretically possible, probably would require native code.

Driving, Navigation, GPS, Geocaching, etc - we've got all that, but typically only one or two options in each category.

Replacement web browsers - well, we shouldn't have a web browser that is in dire need of replacement, but it's just a damn difficult undertaking.

"Battery Boost" programs - probably just Snake Oil. Wether they are or not, we can't really do anything like that, unless we make definite Snake Oil.

"Blacklist Manager" - blacklists telephone numbers from reaching you. Oh, we can't access the incoming call information, not before during or after the call. (I'd really like to have our nifty "TimeTracker" app coordinated with the telephone call system, so it could automatically track telephone calls with certain people.

Swype - don't really know how it works, thinking it's not possible, considering it falls under "keyboard replacement" most likely.

Just a sampling there, I didn't go more than one page deep in any of the categories.

[millertime]

IMHO HP will not go alone this time . They will make an alliance a joint venture company with one or two partners. It will reduce risk and dollars amounts on investement, expenses.

ALTERNATIVE1 :
Samsung/HTC/Sony or any great hardware manufacturer.
HP for the webOS software.


ALTERNATIVE 2:

Samsung/HTC/Sony or any great hardware manufacturer.
Amazon for the ecosystem.
HP for the webOS software.

If this alternative happens then Amazon will come with a webos smartphone for 2012 and a webos tablet.

ALTERNATIVE 3:
HP just found a cheaper part and componets supplier in Korea, Japan or Taiwan who don´t work with Apple at all and are coming with the 2.0 tablet .

DEVICES SHOWTIME for any of the alternatives:CES 2012 Jan 10-13th, 2012 Las Vegas.

I think that you are right, she is hinting at a partnership with someone. Here are two companies to add to the guesses on partnership - Qualcomm or Intel. Intel is my best guess. It has been reported that Intel was brought to the table when HP bought Palm and HP took bids on the processors to go inside the Touchpad and phones. Intel wants to get into mobile devices, and making a partnership with their partner HP makes a lots of sense. However, there will be no devices by CES. They don't even have a hardware team anymore.

[fgdn17]

What are some things that needs to happen if Meg were to put the webOS back into full force? I would like to know what would happen.

How many software developers would she need to hire? Where would she get them? How do they make new hardware? How long does it take to get new products on the shelves? What kind of features does webOS need to stay competitive? How will these features be integrated into the OS? What about webOS needs to change? What needs to be thrown out? What can be improved?

A lot of these may seem like easy answers, but they aren't.. and this is just barely touching base.

It all comes down to this: Is the risk greater than the reward? If the answer is 'yes,' then we won't see any more webOS.

or maybe....continue with webOS reducing dev cost...

get the next version of HP Touchpad tablet working(Qualcomm’s S4)
and release with windows 8 and/or webOS (consumer choice),
letting the expected Enterprize adoption of Touchpad Windows 8
carry the reduced dev cost of webOS for say not more than 5 years..
if by then webOS has lost favor...sell it off...

HP Touchpad2 16GB/webOS $329.00
HP Touchpad2 32GB/webOS $379.00
HP Touchpad2 64GB/webOS $429.00

HP Touchpad2 32GB/Windows 8 $489.00
HP Touchpad2 64GB/Windows 8 $539.00
HP Touchpad2 128GB/Windows 8 $599.00

[hstechfl]

I think maybe some of you are misinterpreting what she said.

She didnt say, "We didnt give it a chance."

She said, "We didnt GET a chance."

Who could they not have got a chance from? The consumers? The market as a whole? Leo?

Im not sure. But it sounds like she is blaming WebOS's failure on something or someone outside the company.

[Rockbeast]

There's a bit of a difference between fishing and selling, though. Fishing is a lot of waiting for the right people to come along. Selling is finding the right people, and convincing them that the product is right for them.

Well, you know how these comparisons go, some aspects apply, others don't.

I don't mean this as a negative criticism, but I don't think you know a lot about fishing. At least, you don't sound like a really good fisherman. Again, that isn't meant to be mean, just an observation with limited data. For what it's worth, I'm not a good fisherman, but I have a brother and some friends who are, and although they may enjoy the relaxing nature of 'waiting' for the fish to bite, particularly when they are standing in a beautiful mountain trout stream, that does not begin to define the art and work of fishing.

Fishing is a whole lot more than waiting. It is positioning, it is designing the right bait which requires you to know your target audience, know what attracts them, knowing when is the most effective time to attract them. It is being aware of changing conditions, and adjusting to take advantage of those changes. And of course, there is the element of waiting and just plain dumb luck (which is how I catch fish! ). So, please don't sell the fishing analogy short. I believe there is more to be gleaned there than your statement quoted above indicates. But, fishing and selling are different in certain ways too...it's just that fishing tends to be more fun! ...and tasty!

You know that saying "...love what you do and you'll never work another day in your life!" I suppose if we could look at our job (selling or engineering even) like fishing...we'd be smiling most days!