As suggested last week, it seems that TCL, parent company of Alcatel Onetouch, has indeed purchased the rights to the Palm trademarks from HP and plans to launch new devices under that banner. What new devices, exactly, is still a mystery, however.
Today TCL CEO George Guo said that he believed the existing value of the Palm brand had piqued the company’s interest in acquiring the trademarks, though it seems it did so without much of a plan for the future. The executive said that the Palm name will be brought back to the market, but TCL is hoping that the public will provide ideas for products it can produce under the brand.
We’ve gotten word from inside HP that the company is set to release an inexpensive Android smartphone aimed at the prepaid and emerging (BRIC) markets. We’re hearing the street price will be around $200 and it will be released in more than one market. Our source has pegged the launch at next week but delays can’t be ruled out at this point (and we’ve yet to hear anything publicly). Nokia Meego defector and new HP SVP Mobility Alberto Torres is said to be heading up the group which has been working on the product for a year and a half.
We’re hearing that the device resembles the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note with obvious cost cutting measures to get the device down to the $200 price point. With HP’s Slate Android products, the company cut costs by using low pixel density displays so having a 720P display would seem about right and put it on a collision course with Samsung’s Galaxy Mega line with its 6.3-inch display and current street price of around $400.
HP CEO Meg Whitman last year confirmed the company was building a smartphone on the trail of dumping its WebOS ‘detour’.
“So a smartphone is not if, but when, for Hewlett-Packard?” – Whitman replied: “[HP has] to ultimately offer a smartphone, because in many countries in the world that is your first computing device. You know, there will be countries around the world where people may never own a tablet or a PC or desktop. They will do everything on the smartphone. We’re a computing company, we have to take advantage of that form factor.”
“We don’t have any plans to introduce a smartphone in 2013, but we’ve got to start thinking about what is our unique play, how do we capture this element of the personal computing market?” Whitman said.
HP has to offer every kind of device, from workstations through all-in-one PCs, laptops, hybrid PCs, tablets “and, ultimately, smartphones,” she said.
“I believe that five years from now, if we don’t have a smartphone or whatever the next generation of that device is, we’ll be locked out of a huge segment of the population in many countries of the world,” she said.
Usually-reliable source @evleaks has tweeted a photo of what is said to be LG’s new smart TV running webOS, as LG officially announced the world’s largest 4K OLED TV “incorporating LG’s newest smart TV platform.”
The HP team responsible for Enyo — webOS’s HTML5-based application framework that debuted on the TouchPad — will be leaving the company and starting at Google shortly, The Verge has learned. What this means for the future of Open webOS is unclear; Enyo and the developers supporting it are central to HP’s open source strategy for the operating system going forward, and it’s hard to say whether this move will have any effect on the planned late 2012 release for version 1.0.
It is pretty clear that webOS is over. With similar roots in Linux, the team could probably do some good with Google’s Android and Chrome products.
Remember when HP had that crazy TouchPad fire sale late last year and some users were lucky enough to get versions already running Android? It appears now that HP was actually testing its own custom builds of Gingerbread on the TouchPad, as indicated by a gesture today. RootzWikireported that HP gave the CyanogenMod team some very useful information so they could continue work on building its CyanogenMod 9 port for the HP TouchPad. This will make the process much speedier for releasing a stable version of the port.
“HP supports the community and was kind enough to provide us with the Android kernel source and some other GPL components that they modified for the few Touchpads that were accidentally released running Android.”
The bundle of code that HP handed over sadly does not have Wi-Fi support for the tablet, but we are sure that it will not be long with some simple hacking. So, why would HP do such a thing? In related news, CyanogenMod 9 Alpha 0.5 was released yesterday for the HP TouchPad.
Meg Whitman, 55, a former eBay CEO and the president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard since September 2011, hinted that anything is possible concerning the fate of webOS, including dropping the platform entirely and going with Google’s Android mobile operating system. Additionally, she also commented that Apple stands a chance of zooming past her company – which files as the world’s leading computer vendor – some time during next year, chiefly on the strength of the iPad 3 launch.
Hewlett-Packard happens to make printers that run Android which support Google’s Cloud Print. Therefore, it’s not terribly shocking that they’re questioning viability of the webOS platform. The company will reach a decision on webOS “soon”.
As you know, after HP indicated it might sell of webOS, that asset has remained in a state of turmoil, to say the least. Even though Whitman reassured fans of her company that the management is adamant to consider all available options, she did nod at Android as one of the choices being considered.
Interestingly enough, during the same interview, Whitman talked a bit about the future of webOS. She stated that a decision would be made in the next two weeks as there are currently 600 employees in ‘limbo’. The only hint about its future is that Whitman stated that HP needs two OSes but Android could replace webOS.
As for Apple beating HP to the PC punch, Whitman told French newspaper Le Figaro (machine translated):
The fine folks over at the Touch-Droid forums have posted a guide that outlines exactly how-to port Android to the HP TouchPad. A lot of consumers bought the HP TouchPad duing the fire sale last month, only to realize WebOS isn’t exactly the greatest mobile OS out there. Luckily, fine developers everywhere have been working on a port.
The steps outlined are pretty technical, so this isn’t exactly for the feeble — yet. We expect developers will probably get a much simpler version up soon. But for those of you who are up for the challenge, this should work for now. Check out the instructions over at the forum, and the video above. We’re not sure exactly how stable this build is. Expand Expanding Close
HP’s now deceased TouchPad tablet, powered by the webOS software.
In addition to whispers of a possible take over of Hewlett-Packard’s personal computer business worth forty million PC units in 2011, Samsung is said to be considering purchasing the webOS operating system HP got through the last year’s Palm acquisition.
This comes via a DigiTimesreport this morning, citing “sources from notebook players”. In fact, that may be the reason alone behind Samsung’s rumored interest in HP’s PC making biz, the sources suspect. Samsung, of course, already makes PC notebooks but with only ten million units in this year they aren’t exactly in the big league.
Of course, the rumor-mill has been speculating about such a move since Hewlett-Packard shot down webOS and announced intentions to exit the low-margin personal computer business earlier this month. While we have to take those stories with a few pinches of salt, it’s easy to see webOS flourish under Samsung.
The company would further reduce its dependence on Android software as Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola has left the search giant’s commitment to Android backers dwindling in the air.
Samsung, which also develops Bada, its own operating system for feature phones, could make, promote and sell webOS smartphones and tablets on a global scale. And if HP’s TouchPad fire-sale is an indication, the industry and consumers yearn for a third mobile platform in order to avoid the Android-iOS duopoly. Think about it: The webOS software running on Samsung’s beautifully designed hardware rocking cutting-edge processors and graphics – and priced aggressively – could let Samsung compete with iPad more effectively than with its current crop of Android-driven tablets.
Let’s not forget Palm’s intellectual property portfolio that would no doubt enable the company to avoid future lawsuits from rivals. As a matter of fact, the webOS licensing would enable Samsung to gain a much-needed patent leverage against Apple in the mobile space.
In the battle for mobile supremacy, Apple and Google are winning as competitors continue to lose ground, finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the strong iOS and Android ecosystems (can you say ‘duopoly’?), per latest survey from the NPD Group. The results came by tracking U.S. consumers aged 18+ who reported purchasing a mobile phone and exclude corporate purchases. In the June quarter, iOS grabbed 29 percent of the U.S. smartphone share versus Google’s 52 percent share. Both tech behemoths have grown their platform share at the expense of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
RIM’s been on a serious decline amid poor sales and delays related to their QNX-based superphones. Their BlackBerry OS software share fell to just eleven percent in the U.S. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard’s webOS is in a state of limbo as the world’s leading computer maker announced intentions to exit the hardware business. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile grabbed five percent of the market each.
The emerging prepaid market is the next battelground for iOS and Android. Google, however, has the first mover advantage here… Expand Expanding Close
HP’s Todd Bradley unveiled the family of webOS-driven smartphones and tablets in February 2011.
Samsung, the leading Android device vendor, is apparently considering webOS mobile operating system from Hewlett-Packard for use in their own devices, reportsSlashGear citing unnamed sources. This doesn’t mean Samsung is ditching Android – the company has invested too much into the platform and it has been working out for them really well.
But the Korean consumer electronics powerhouse also has another mobile software of its own, called Bada, that is gaining share and popularity on so-called feature and mid-range phones, basically a cross between smartphones and dumb phones. Bringing another platform to the mix would enable greater choice, watchers say, which is the same argument Google uses to justify Android.
Coincidentally, Bloomberg also reported earlier today that HP’s CEO Leo Apotheker confirmed licensing talks with Asian vendors:
We are talking to a number of companies. I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations.
This jibes with what an industry source told 9to5Google, that HP has basically sent out their sales teams after several Asian vendors who are said to be increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that Google so far only approved four handset makers into the Honeycomb program for tablets. These companies, the source underscored, are annoyed that Google has begun exercising tighter control over the Android ecosystem, essentially shutting them out at a time when both HP and Microsoft are actively seeking hardware partners to support their struggling mobile operating systems. Expand Expanding Close
It is pretty clear that webOS is over. With similar roots in Linux, the team could probably do some good with Google’s Android and Chrome products.
