HP eyes webOS iPad rival In purchasing Palm, HP intends to build and sell not only a new collection of phones based on Palm's critically-acclaimed webOS, but a line of webOS tablets as well. On Wednesday, the two companies announced that HP has agreed to acquire Palm for roughly $1.2bn - $5.70 per share of Palm common stock - and according to Todd …
WebOS will simple remain a small player, not because its not technically up to par, or better than what's out there, but the developer eco system for it is still born. The reason, in my opinion, is not having a set of Java APIs to code against. Very few will invest the time/money to learn to program on the non-portable html/CSS/javascript API it now uses. I know that's what cooled my interest in it right away. Now Android, well it Java based, RIM Java based. iPhone well that's Mac Object C based. See the point, the successful platforms all leverage substantial community of developers for their device.
But wait, there is already a large community of web developers out there, why don't they code for the webOS? Simple, there are so many frameworks, tool sets out there in that land that for any given technology, only a small fraction of people actually know it well enough to do the really cool stuff. Most are probable of the cut and paste type of programmers.
One more thing, were we not their years ago with BeOS, vastly superior to anything out there at the time, but failed to gain market acceptance due to lack of developer support (M$ anti competitive behavior didn't help matter either). I always said that if the just made a solid Java API and pushed that, then it might actually have gained some traction.
... I think people are a little revisionist on that one. It was technologically ahead, but lacking quite a lot of spit and polish on the user interface. For example, those funny window titlebars could be positioned anywhere along the top of their respective window so that you could easily create a stack of windows with the tabs working like real, physical folder tabs. But then the system would save the window positions but not the tab positions, so next time you'd have switched from each access to everything in the stack to no access to anything else in the stack without moving everything about all over the place. And that's just one example.
Though I guess their biggest mistake was trying to charge Apple double what they ended up paying for Next.
I kind of stopped reading when you described HTML/CSS/Javascript as "non portable". Really, now.
The point is that there are a lot of web developers out there that could use Palm's dev tools. And they have an amazing set of development apps that are (IMO) unrivaled even by Android (it took forever to get the SDK and particularly the emulator working for me).
Android is Java-based. iPhone is Objective-C. Windows Mobile is .NET. There's no such thing as an API that works across all platforms- though a few third parties are trying hard to provide one.
I'm glad Palm are being snapped up, as I quite like my Pre. It's got a few problems - battery life being the most frustrating one - but it's a nice user interface, and I'd like to see it in more devices.
The most frustrating lack-of-app at the moment is Turn by Turn GPS - it's available in the US from Sprint (I believe), but there isn't a UK equivalent for any price...
Have you tried getting any support from HP? Woeful at best; an SLA that seems to be over a week for consumer products; complete lack of knowledge of their own products.....
I had a HP Ipaq 614c - supposedly the top of the range - loads and loads of problems and their support was so bad, I just gave up and went to Blackberry instead.
Awful company - I'll never buy anything from them again. Only reason they're still around is they practically give the printers away and sell ink at vastly over-inflated prices using dubious techniques to make people throw away partially emptied cartridges.
I didn't even consider a Palm phone as an option because I figured there was no guarantee they would survive.
With HP buying Palm, and investing in developing WebOS, they are now worth taking a serious look at.
I'm currently looking at updating to a new phone, so who knows, my next handset could be a Palm.
"With webOS, we'll be able to aggressively deploy an integrated platform that will allow HP to own the entire customer experience."
I wonder how monkey boy will react to that. Much like he did when Asus tried a similar thing I expect.
Where are all the ARM based netbooks I was promised anyway?
With HP behind Palm, they'll be able to make the Palm Pre's clock tell the right time? Seems to be an issue all over the world.
Oh, and maybe they can sort out the build quality of the Pre - slide phones are always tricky in this regard, but the corners chip off the Pre far too easily. I have 2 phones on a business contract, replacing one per year, so each phone should last 2 years. I'm expecting to have to replace the Pre after just one year - just not good enough for a device that's supposedly worth £300+.
For the record, my other phone is an O2 XDA with WinMo 6.1. Solid build, still like new after 18 months. Shame about the OS!
If Adobe can write something that can convert a Flash app to an iPhone app then why don't Palm do that for WebOS? As an iPhone developer I don't have time to learn a whole new OS but if there was a utility that did that for me I'd imagine thousands of iPhone apps would get ported over.
And it is called PDK.
It is coming out of Beta at the end of May, but in the mean time Gameloft had an early access and is porting ALL their games to WebOS (17 so far) the complete list is at http://www.gameloft.co.uk/download-games/palm-pre-games/?selected_sort=name&alpha_21=all_alpha)
Cheers
And how will they make a different product from the zillions of Android phones already in the market?
In less than a year a very poor Palm has managed to have 2000 apps in the catalog, I think with HP's money, knowing that they will stay and the easy iPhone ports that the PDK brings, in one year the number of apps wont matter any more,
Mark Hurd knows this. See his agenda is to make as much money personally before getting found out for the one trick pony he is. His ongoing strategy is to buy then cut then buy again before the market cottons on to internal problems, plus buying a company strokes his already overinflated ego. Developing something on the other hand would mean putting trust in his own developers, which means treating them with respect and opening the gates of pay restraint, which means Marky Mark risks not getting his bonus.
Wake up people, HP doesn't do IT, it does 'financial engineering' .
With Samsung developing its own OS, and now HP buying Palm, it seems that at least some of the larger players that still have options open to them (i.e. not Motorola) have become aware of the risks involved with allying yourself with the Google.
Android is not a mobile OS, it's a strategic weapon for Google to do as much harm to its competitors. As far as Google is concerned, it really doesn't matter how or where you connect to the internet, just as long as they can stuff your face with ads.
Of course they could have. But so could everyone else. Phone manufacturers have already started to have problems making their Android phones distinctive- they either add a UI layer (HTC, some Motorola phones IIRC) or go all out with hardware.
Although it's lacking in apps, WebOS is something that'll make HP products stand out in the marketplace. I own an Android phone, but if I'd had more faith in WebOS at the time, I would have bought a Pre.
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