In the end, Hewlett-Packard had as much luck with webOS as Palm did. Maybe even less.
So long, TouchPad, we hardly knew you.
H-P said today it would discontinue operations for devices running on the webOS, including its recently launched TouchPad and smartphones.
The sudden death of webOS, which won critical acclaim but little commercial success, underscored the brutally competitive nature of the smartphone operating system. With a much smaller scale relative to the likes of Apple's iOS or Google's Android, it had a high initial obstacle to clear. The slick software may not have ever had a chance to begin with.
Palm bungled the debut of the software, choosing to go with a then-weak No. 3 carrier Sprint Nextel as its sole partner. It compounded the error with a wave of head-scratching advertisements that did little to sell the benefits of the phone. The software also never got the corresponding quality hardware from Palm, resulting in cheap-feeling devices.
H-P hardly did better. Its first H-P-branded device was the tiny Veer, which looked more like a toy than a genuine smartphone. It still never found a carrier partner for the Pre 3, which was supposed to be the revamped flagship phone. The TouchPad tablet, meanwhile, suffered from an underwhelming launch, with reports of Best Buy sitting on piles of unsold inventory.
"H-P has had Palm for more than a year and has failed to demonstrate any traction," said Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research.
For now, the smartphone market is largely a two-horse race dominated by Apple and Google. With Research in Motion reeling with its software transition and Microsoft still trying to gain awareness for its Windows Phone software, it's easy to see how webOS could have struggled with only a single supporter in H-P.
Source: cnet
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