With HP Out of the Running, Can Anyone Compete with Android and iPhone? Discussion

[Ed Hardy]

In his latest "From the Editors Desk" column, Ed Hardy discusses why HP was forced to end its plans to release phones and tablets based on the webOS, and what it means for anyone trying to compete with Google and Apple.

Read the full content of this Article: With HP Out of the Running, Can Anyone Compete with Android and iPhone?

Related Articles:

• HP To Stop Making webOS Smartphones, Might License the OS to Others
• HP Veer Review: A Tiny Titan
• Palm Pre 2 Review

[KSD]

WP7.....wait who? Just saying. I wonder if they will release an open source code of this so the community can custom build an OS.....would be cool

[Antoine Wright]

While I agree that consumers make the decision, the customers for Pre devices were carriers, and Palm nor HP were able to market to them. Of all the "problems" that webOS has had, this woud seem to be one that's missed in much of the commentary.

That said, it's a sad day for mobile, and even for sites like BH, webOS was a sign of what used to be the excitement about mobile. When I visited the Computer History Museum in San Jose, I felt that excitement looking at many of the mobiles that I used to review. I don't get that excitement now. I see the aquescening to the popular choice, making for a different kind of mobile experience. The excitement is for a different breed of users, a different kind of mobile. Not the direction I would prefer, but it is the one that's here.

There's been commentary on twitter and others places that webOS should go open source. Weirdly, I don't think it should. I think it's framework should be the W3C mobile web app standard. But really, most of it can be done on most mobile platforms now. I hope that webOS users and evangelists see the enablement to mobility they have with that. Anything else isn't pushing mobile ahead enough.

[hal]

While I agree that consumers make the decision, the customers for Pre devices were carriers, and Palm nor HP were able to market to them. Of all the "problems" that webOS has had, this woud seem to be one that's missed in much of the commentary.

That said, it's a sad day for mobile, and even for sites like BH, webOS was a sign of what used to be the excitement about mobile. When I visited the Computer History Museum in San Jose, I felt that excitement looking at many of the mobiles that I used to review. I don't get that excitement now. I see the aquescening to the popular choice, making for a different kind of mobile experience. The excitement is for a different breed of users, a different kind of mobile. Not the direction I would prefer, but it is the one that's here.

There's been commentary on twitter and others places that webOS should go open source. Weirdly, I don't think it should. I think it's framework should be the W3C mobile web app standard. But really, most of it can be done on most mobile platforms now. I hope that webOS users and evangelists see the enablement to mobility they have with that. Anything else isn't pushing mobile ahead enough.

Even though I've never owned a WebOS device, I also consider this a somewhat sad day. This is one of the last milestones of a venture that started sometime around 1991, with the Zoomer. Crappy device, BTW, but it's not the occasion to go there This venture involved a lot of collective effort and there are many hallmarks in the current age that came out from it, from practical usage of digital calligraphy, to touchscreens, to mobile media, and so on. And a lot of improvements were achieved to a platform that odd enough, didn't actually evolve that much, until a forced swap was needed. Some time ago I was offered a first gen Pre, and I had to regretfully decline, not because of the UI (which is the BEST I've tested), or because of its computing power. It was the sour lack of apps in its ecosystem. And I wasn't even trying to feed to it what I currently do to my smartphone. I was just trying to enlist a barebones mobile office. No apps, no sales, and I reckon that's the bottom line for HP regarding WebOS.

In one of the apps bundled with one of my Palm OS devices, in the credits splash screen, an app by HandMark, there's a motif that I actually consider very important in many of the occurrences that have taken place from 1998 to the date. The motif reads: Tools and Toys for a Mobile Generation. I mean, as much as I still use a paper ring binder, and printed books, I gotta admit that much of my current productivity is paired to mobile (yes, AW, you win in this one with no objections ). There are many apps that if they don't have a mobile mirror, I think it twice beforehand. There are many more mobile apps that if they don't have a desktop or clouded mirror, thankyouverymuch I'm looking elsewhere. I take the subway and I still obviously spot printed newspapers and magazines here and there, but I do find a gazillion of mobile, in every flavor imaginable. Seems like something out of Mos Eisley. And, with a decreasing chance, I kept on spotting WebOS devices. In many ways, this is the end of an era.

I would also have objections against turning WebOS into open source. For one, I do use a lot of open source, but within it I know a lot of examples in which heading this way actually makes many things go stagnant. OK, cause we're not talking about a monographic effort. A full OS, nomatterwhat it's just mobile, means a lot of effort and it'd take a lot of resources to keep it alive. And said resources have to come from different funding channels, and not all things open source are properly leveraged through them.

[Mi An]

The principle of two seems pretty weak. Even in cherry picked examples it's shakey. MS holds 85% of the desktop OS market. Mac is far more distant of a second to MS's first than linux is distant of a third to Mac's second. Wendy's pulls in 96% of BK's sales -- so if BK is a true McD competitor, so is Wendy's. Were you to dare to look at individual markets instead of nationwide, you'd find a lot more than even 3 burger chains popular per market. Sonic would rate pretty high in the S/SW. In-N-Out and Five Guys are growing super fast on opposite coasts. As to coke and pepsi, it's hard to think of an example where there's less to differentiate. A duopoly to be sure, but I wouldn't hold it up as proof that most consumers can only stomach two options. How about Autos, PCs, appliances, fashion, consoles... etc. Where there are only 2, I'd suspect more an accident of history or localized structural issues than a true sign of consumer tolerance for choice.

The principle might fit slightly better in a market with fairly stark differentiation (safe/guarded vs libertarian) and strong secondary market implications (application compatibility). All the more so when 1 of the competitors can be freely morphed far from it's original shape (reducing the need to start from scratch for any newcomers with a slightly different idea). So the nook color has android, but it doesn't really have android. I can see room between Apple and Google for a middle ground. A platform that leaves some room for a user to tinker while still having enough sense to occassionally scan their official marketplace for malware ( ), but today, it would be easier for Amazon to create that middle ground using Android than for anyone else to do it from scratch. Still, as principles go, that's an ugly one and I couldn't resist pointing it out.

[Hook]

The problem was, HP never really took their deep pockets and did anything with them. Android didn't get where it is on it's good looks or even its app count. In Fall of 2009, Android was a blip at the edge of the radar. Then, just prior to the holidays, Verizon-Motorola-Google blasted the airwaves with an all-the-stops-pulled-out big-budget big-production advertising campaign both pushing their product and *****-slapping Apple with the "Droid Does" stuff. By Spring of 2010, 6 months later, it was clear that Android was going somewhere and the developers jumped in.

If HP had actually ever been interested in more than an IP portfolio and a platform for their printers, they could have done something wonderful with WebOS. They could have enticed carriers and developers to jump in. They weren't interested and that was pretty clear months ago.

[KSD]

The problem was, HP never really took their deep pockets and did anything with them. Android didn't get where it is on it's good looks or even its app count. In Fall of 2009, Android was a blip at the edge of the radar. Then, just prior to the holidays, Verizon-Motorola-Google blasted the airwaves with an all-the-stops-pulled-out big-budget big-production advertising campaign both pushing their product and *****-slapping Apple with the "Droid Does" stuff. By Spring of 2010, 6 months later, it was clear that Android was going somewhere and the developers jumped in.

If HP had actually ever been interested in more than an IP portfolio and a platform for their printers, they could have done something wonderful with WebOS. They could have enticed carriers and developers to jump in. They weren't interested and that was pretty clear months ago.

Also HP never released an ooo wow device....they released they veer right? Or pre or whatever. I can't even recall it

[r0k]

Also HP never released an ooo wow device....they released they veer right? Or pre or whatever. I can't even recall it

It was Veer. As in veer off of the road.

I, too believe this is a sad day. Somebody will buy HP's PC business and I hope they do with it what Lenovo did with IBM's PC business. I still think HP pulled an "Inverse Osborne". With 10% sell through, rather than try to move the remaining inventory, they simply announced they were throwing in the towel. The HP Touchpad isn't worthless because something better is coming. It's worthless because while there are warehouses full of the things, the manufacturer has announced they are folding up their tents. I thought about picking up an HP Touchpad so I could get a better understanding of "another platform". I was way more tempted to grab a Touchpad than a BB Playbook. Now I guess I'll just wait for a value priced Android tablet that isn't dog poop and give that a try.

I was in Meijer the other day and they said they were having decent sell-through of their Android tablets. Of course they don't stock iPad so what choice do they have? It was pretty funny seeing a bunch of "other" tablets and ereaders scattered about, taking up perhaps half an aisle and then seeing an aisle and a half of iPad accessories. Pretty funny.

[Guest]

WP7.....wait who? Just saying. I wonder if they will release an open source code of this so the community can custom build an OS.....would be cool

I wouldn't be surprised if HP reverted to making Windows Phone devices. Both HP and Palm made Windows Mobile devices in the past. That doesn't mean I have any respect for the WP7 platform though.

(I did have respect for webOS, even though I wasn't a user.)

[hal]

I wouldn't be surprised if HP reverted to making Windows Phone devices. Both HP and Palm made Windows Mobile devices in the past. That doesn't mean I have any respect for the WP7 platform though.

(I did have respect for webOS, even though I wasn't a user.)

Guest, I could be wrong, but it all smells like HP is totally pulling off the plug of smartphones and tablets for a while. Or, for good. Lessay somebody around jumps and says "I want a WebOS license". If such an unlikely happening, does take place, for some reason I bet it will be someone in the Far East, say a manufacturer of good hardware and a poorly successful OS, pick your bet. Then HP could keep a hand into mobile being the OS licenser. As of the rest, HP doesn't look like a reasonable competitor in the mobile arena, not even if it turned back into Microsoft's embrace, that for all things is committing itself to Nokia. Of course all these current events are not happening just because of ye olde Palm and its eternal flow of bad luck. There's also much to blame on HP, that BTW had already been turning the Jornadas and iPaqs into dead horses just for the joy of beating on them.

A year and a half. It took Palm and HP a year and a half, to kill a whole mobile ecosystem. Or two. Perhaps we were all fine on Palm OS in the end