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Back in 2009 Palm - a once great company - was already much reduced.
Nokia and Symbian were still big and IOS and Android already growing very fast.
Blackberry was still big.
Windows Mobile had low and shrinking market share and would soon be dropped entirely.
But Palm still had good engineers and a good name and still some cash left (or at least a sizable chunk lent by Venture Capitalists). And it's engineers managed to create an OS for mobile that was years ahead of the competition - plus a couple of nice ideas like the Touchstone.
But it was clear that money would run out in the foresseeable future so they had to move fast and get enough market share before IOS and Android conquer everything.
So they showed a prototype to great fanfare and rushed a marketable product to market.
But the constraints showed. The many early Touchstones - really nice gadgets - had often trouble due to the placing of the induction spool and many of the early Pres also had issues with its casing (see "oreo" effect and split cases, etc...). Also - while the OS is brilliant - it wasn't quite finished at launch. There were monthly updates for over half a year and it took until CES in early 2010 that we can consider webos to be at 1.0 (video app, market available in more countries and many small fixes).
The specs of the Pre was competitive with the IPhone - but a rush of new Android devices made people expect ever more hardware features and Palm only had a slight refresh as answer ith the Pre2 (which was not even available in many markets).
On another front early marketing was a fail. Palm had Verizon as launch parner - but Verizon cancelled the deal. So Palm had to sell via Sprint. It was very similar in Europe where Palm made exclusive deals with O2. Both Sprint and O2 had big ad campaigns (they really wanted a good alternative to the IPhone - which was exclusive at the time - only available via AT&T in the US for example). The problem was that these were smaller networks at a time when almost all smartphone sales where through mobile network providers.
So launch was riddled with problems on all fronts. Weird ads, not enough marketing budget to fix these quickly everywhere, unfinished software, hardware issues.
And of course the worst problem: Smartphones need apps. Any old feature phone allows you to make phone calls, take pictures, send messages, even emails, or even do some small organizer stuff like taking notes and appointments. Smartphones can do all these better, but the real deal is that a smartphone is not so much a phone, but a small PC. And like a PC it needs applications. Nobody wants to use Windows or MacOSX or Linux by itself. An OS is just a platform to run applications on.
Given that webos was the nth platform (after IOS, Android, Blackbery and even soo-to-be-killed Windows Mobile) it had trouble attracting developers. A dev trying to make money had to support IOS and likely Android (especially at that time). Blackberry and Windows Mobile were still old and big enough that they got a decent amount of attention.
There where some really nice apps available - and the list was growing (and Palm tried to get the most bang for their buck by having a competition going with a couple million in total price money).
But for many people there was always this or that killer app missing (Netflix, etc...)
So in 2010 webos had still the most advanced OS, most of the early bugs were fixed and there were a minimal but growing list of apps available with many promising things on the horizon. But a combination of the early problems and an explosion of Android devices made many people doubt that Palm could survive that. And this perception can easily lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy - users and devs and even vendors "invest" time and money (or just shelf space) in platforms they deem likely to be succesful enough.
All of these problems were fixable. With enough patience and money all that could be solved in a year or 2. After all Android had a rocky start to. In the early days it lacked apps, the devices had issues and there weren't that many apps. All the money was made on IPhones back then.
But Palm could see their money running out before they got there. So they tried to find a big player to sell themselves to - and found them: HP.
It seemed like a perfect match at the time. Palm had a great platform - it only lacked money and influence. HP was the worlds bigest PC vendor and had interests in peactically all segments of IT - but lacked presence in the fast exploding mobile market. A HP that takes over Palm could potentially beat Apple at Apples game (integrated shop whcih proves the hardware, the os and controls the app market).
And that was the plan of the then CEO of HP.
And for a short while things looked great. HP said the right things, announced new devices (underwhelming in some regards - but still a solid step forward). For a few months it looked like webos now had the resources and connections to grow out of its small niche. And this time bigger partners were on board.
And then - as if there was a curse on webos - things started to fell apart. HP kicked out its CEO. It took them a while to find another one. At times like these companies don't make great strategic investments and managers within a big company vie for new positions or try to protect their existing turfs.
When Leo Apotheker toom over as CEOit again seemed like things were back on track. He said mostly the right things and traveled the world to better understand this big company he has to manage. Later it turns out that he actually tried to avoid to appear at court as a witness regarding a big lawsuit. And in hindsight it seems clear to me that he was hired (and replaced Mark Hurd) to move HP out of consumer markets and make it more like IBM (focused on business). Later revelations showed that HP upper management was busy with turf wars and backstabbing and had no time to actually properly manage their global enterprise in a sane way.
And then things crumbled very fast. The new line of webos hardware had a lacklustre launch by a company that tried to get out of the consumer business, had lied about their strategy to custumers, suppliers and business partners. Old devices didn't get updates anymore. Within weeks of of the launch earlier promises abput features and sevices didn't materialze or were dropped. And soon after HP had to rush an announcement that it now only loves Enterprise, invests 10 bn into another enterprise company (that later turns out to be close to worthless) and wants to sell it's consumer busines. And as that includes its mobile business it obviously idn't see much point in invsting into market share for webos - when it wants to get out of that market - thus it annunced the end of webos and firesales all devices.
Within a single year HP switched from a "let's be like Apply" strategy to a "let's be like IBM" strategy and totally botched the execution of that silly plan. It then found out that seelling it's PC business would mean less bargaining power in various markets and therefore higher costs everywhere.
So instead of saving Palm and webos HP took both down with it.
I'm still using my Pre3 and IMHO it stil has the best OS on the market. But the devices get ever more outdated and hardly any new apps appear anymore (ironic thing about the earlier collapse was that the firesale lead to a short second spring for webos - with many new apps coming out shortly after HP killed the OS - thanks to a sudden rise in market share - though that was naturally short-term).
And if only the browser would get updates I would continue to use the Pre3 for at least another year or 2. Most apps are just convenient small device adaptations of web sites anyway. With ever more web sites offering mobile versions apps aren't that important to me (and the existing games are sufficient for my mobile gaming needs).
I'll propbably switch to Android in a few months as it doesn't look like openwebos is getting any really usable versions out in time.
I have a Nexus 7 (I prefer 7" over 10") and I would replace Android today with webos if I could just install it and have an up-to-date browser and a handful of core apps.
Android is nice enough, but webos is still better. On the Nexus I miss the easy flowing gestures, the great Synergy contacts, the Touchstone (all Qi devices so far suffer from being ugly), the better multi-tasking of webos and various other details that IOS and Android are still catching up to - a freakin 4 years after webos arrived (notifications on webos is still better - but Android has almost caught up there).
Long story short - Palm had the vision and engineering competence - but lacked resources and connections and was also clearly cursed with a string of bad luck events.
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Originally Posted by TechTechGoose
