We know that HP is hot-to-trot to get webOS up and running on a tablet/slate device and obviously webOS is going to continue to run on smartphones, but this article on Forbes has us thinking: is HP thinking bigger?
"Smartphones are a part of this, but this is really about the Web operating system," Shane Robison, HP’s chief strategy and technology officer, told Forbes. "It’s a change in our business model to a connected device model." HP, he said, is assuming a world in which almost everything needs at least the potential to connect to the Internet.
Long-time followers of mobility may remember that 3Com (former Palm owner and soon-to-be fellow HP-owned subsidiary) had just such a vision with the Audrey. It didn’t work then (the dot-com bust didn’t help) and in general the dream of every device in your house getting an internet connection has always been of the pipe-variety. Perhaps HP thinks that time is coming?
We’re not arguing that webOS should be slapped on any old thing – but it does raise an interesting question for us: what, at its core, is webOS? If it’s a great multitasking smartphone OS, well, then shoehorning it into other devices isn’t going to work so well. But what if HP buys into Palm’s argument that webOS is, at its core, the best way to take the web and modern, HTML5 standards and turn it into a touch-friendly operating system? If so, then HP could be making a play to make webOS the best way to put "the web" on devices.
It very similar to the ideas behind Google’s Chrome OS, but the direction that Palm has already said they are taking with the future of webOS sounds much more robust than Chrome OS.
Toasters? Bad idea. But HP is definitely thinking outside the smartphone box:
In his call to analysts Wednesday, Bradley identified vertical markets like health care and education in which devices might soon appear, sold through HP’s partners.
What do you think is the essence of webOS? Do you think that HP could help make it the de-facto way to get the web on internet-connected devices, supplanting Android and WinCE?