HP Seeks Broad Licensing Base For WebOS

The next frontier in the mobile operating system wars is stripping the cumbersome OS down to its basics and extending it to any device that accesses the cloud. This is the goal of Intel MeeGo and the more extreme Google Chrome OS, but one of the best articulated strategies has come from Hewlett-Packard, with the webOS it acquired with Palm. It has described how it will embed the cloud-focused technology in all its devices from phones to printers to PCs, often alongside more conventional OSs, and now it hopes to get broad industry support for its platform via a licensing program.

Focal Points:

• Leo Apotheker, CEO of HP, says the firm is already talking to potential licensees and will market webOS "aggressively" to companies looking for an alternative mobile and cloud platform. This could, he implied, provide a counterbalance to Google and Microsoft, by offering partners a route towards modern mobile cloud architectures, but one that could live alongside existing investments in Windows or Android.
• While HP will launch its own TouchPad tablet this summer, this will be something of a showcase and profile builder for webOS. Selling mobile devices per se is a secondary objective for HP, which has made little impact in smartphones either with its own lines or Palm's. But like Microsoft, it knows its real power would come from seeing its core technology embedded in millions of devices of all kinds, boosting its real business - back end and cloud platforms and services, for enterprises and service providers.

"I happen to believe webOS is a uniquely outstanding operating system and there's no reason to believe the only hardware that can run it is HP," Apotheker said at The Wall Street Journal's D9: All Things Digital conference in southern California. He also hopes to push it beyond the usual business and consumer gadgets into broader categories that will feature embedded wireless and web access - in-car systems, healthcare devices, and all manner of appliances for the home and industry. "There are many people who make all kinds of devices, why wouldn't they want to use webOS? Appliance makers can use webOS," he argued, concluding that the operating system had "come a long, long way. We're getting webOS ready for prime time."