HP has finally come to a decision on what to do with webOS, and despite months of speculation linking many top tech firms with a buyout, in the end HP has decided not to sell.
Instead it will open up the source code for the troubled platform to the open-source community in the hope of getting other hardware manufacturers interested in working with it.
HP took ownership of webOS when it bought Palm out last year, and was quick to announce ambitious plans to expand the OS into a global platform running on all its products.
But it hasn't quite worked out that way. The Pre 3 smartphone and the Touchpad tablet both failed to make any kind of impact at all, leading HP to cut its losses and sell off its remaining stock at dramatically reduced prices to recoup at least some of its losses.
The general consensus was that HP would then offload the OS to the highest bidder, with Samsung, Facebook andAmazon among the names mentioned, but it looks like webOS will have a very different future instead.
Of course, there's always the possibility that webOS could be the next Android, establishing a broad base of hardware partners and building momentum from there. Then again, it could also go the way of Symbian...
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