HP dished out a massive $1.2 billion to acquire Palm and their intuitive and under appreciated webOS platform. Palm released the Pre and Pre2, then HP tried to save the day by releasing the Pre 3, Veer and the HP TouchPad. All of the devices never seemed to grab the consumers attention, nor mass adoption. Now, months later, with a new CEO at the helm, HP has announced they’ll continuing to release tablets, but will be powered by Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 OS. As for the fate of webOS, HP said they’ll come to a decision within the “next couple of months”. It’s been rumoured that they could license it out to other manufacturers, or another company might purchase it from them.
HP CEO Meg Whitman said “I think we need to be in the tablet business, and we’re certainly going to be there with Windows 8. So we’re going to make another run at this business. And we’re going to make a decision about the long-term future of webOS within HP over the next couple of months. And as soon as we make that decision we’ll let you know on that.”
Source: FierceWireless
