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Guest Editorial: Think Beyond, Devs

By: , 2/14/2011 10:30 pm | 29 comments

[The following is a guest editorial from Rick Boatright]

A lot of devs were underwhelmed with both the press event and the dev event on February 9. I’ve been trying to think about that in a way which resembles what the Kremlin watchers had to do back in the days of the cold war. Perhaps it’s that I’m a child of the 60′s and just think that there must be hidden undercurrents, but I think I saw something yesterday that confirmed thinking I’ve been doing for quite a while.

Why did Todd Bradley from HP at the Think Beyond event make such a big deal about HP’s scale? Why talk about two laptops a second? Why show us photoshoped printers running webOS?

Well, you need to put what Todd said together with Matt McNulty’s comment at the dev event that they don’t bother to use the emulator, they do their testing of Enyo apps in Safari on their desktops. If HP does as they said and start shipping a laptop every two seconds with icons which bring up webOS UI’s and allow those laptops to automagically link to webOS tablets and phones and printers….

Then, over sixty million people (two laptops a second for a year) will have webOS enabled devices and will be buying into the webOS ecology… and buying webOS apps. Those people will want webOS apps. They will want their webOS enabled printers and tablets and phones to talk to their webOS enabled laptops so that they can participate in that ecology which allows them to have access to their apps and their data wherever they are, whenever they want it.

What sort of sell through does that take to make serious money for a developer?

Speculating further, since HP moved their entire media-player team to the Palm unit, how far behind will a webOS set-top-box for your TV be?

But back to the implications for developers. At the end of FY2010, apple claimed to have produced about 73 million total iPhones of all four generations combined. But let’s be real, just like Pre’s are dying iPhone 1 and 2′s are not super used these days…

webOS could see a massive availability of market to devs over the next 24 months, far larger than the iPhone market, potentially larger than the iPhone and Android markets combined. But to be ready to play in that field, you have to stay the course, you have to get with the program for the new OS and new programming environment and you have to realize that the game changed because HP isn’t Palm.

HP thinks big. How big? Think of something really, really big. No, no, something really big. Got it in your head? Good. HP is thinking bigger than that.

That’s my take. Ignore the hardware. Geeks focus way too much on the hardware You shouldn’t. Who cares? The Pre3 looks nice. The veer is cute, the tablet is a nice tablet, but those are all just sort of interesting. We know perfectly well that over the next twenty four months, there will be more hardware, more phones, more tablets, more printers, as-yet-unannounced laptop software, hypothetical HP-TV settop boxes running webOS with kinect like controllerless UI’s… all running webOS, all sharing profiles and the ability to toss data and apps from one to the other. Focus on the market. HP put Palm in the consumer division. They’re planning on marketing Palm to the six billion, not to the enterprise. One of Todd’s slide showed all those connected devices, an ECOLOGY of webOS. Think Big. Then think beyond that.

It’s time to get ready.

Rick Boatright
Evangelist for WebOS-Internals

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About Roy Sutton

Roy has been active in the Palm developer community since just after the Palm Pre was released. He has been a mobile developer for far longer than the term 'mobile computing' has been around. During the day, he develops software and systems for barcode and RFID data collection. He has published two apps for webOS and has several more in the pipeline. He was formerly editor at Pre 101.
View all posts by Roy Sutton →
  • NoSo86

    I like how you guys are so positive. Everyone else on every other tech blog, including myself sometimes, are throwing everything from tv’s to computers and from chairs to sofas at HP/ Palm because of the availability of these devices. But deep down there’s a reason why HP is doing this, there’s a reason why they have the scale that they do. Keep it up!

    • Jared

      Nobody knows or cares about HP / WebOS except got the geeks on blogs and message boards like this. It’s going to take a slip up from droid and /or the iphone for HP / WebOS to come out of the minority. If there is not a WebOS option in place for sprint customers by June / July HP is going to go down the same path Palm went down two years ago.

      • Anonymous

        Glad to see you are all knowing that you can say nobody cares. I am certainly not a techie or a geek. it seems to me that there is a bunch of weepy folk out there who probably love webOS and are frantic that it will crash and burn so they constantly say negative things hoping to get some action from the HP. Or they are weepy folk who troll these blogs downing webOS because that is all the creative ability they seem to have. Get this Jared not everyone likes Android and iOS. Just like not everyone likes a Lexus, or chocolate icecream. This is America it is ok to have lots of choices. So I think you can’t speak for Everybody.

        • Kallisti78

          Well, not everyone is in America but it is still ok to have lots of choices. :) Not everyone is on Sprint (or ATT/VRZ/TM).. there are actually probably about 4.8 billion out of the about 5 billion mobile phone owners in the world that are not in the US. As the editorial writer said “They’re planning on marketing Palm to the six billion[..]“.

          Think big! Not like big as a car, even a big car. Not big like a house, even the Pentagon (7th largest building in the world floor space wise). Think the Universe!

      • Kallisti

        Funny how many comments have a perspective of half a year or so. HP didn’t buy Palm to put out some killer phones in the first year, they bought it to change their entire ecosystem. A webOS option in place for Sprint customers in July! :) You even write “the same path Palm went down two yeas ago” without realising you are not giving HP even one year. The market will still be there in one, two, five years and so will HP. As if the hardware and even the software showed off last week is the be all and end all of HPs webOS investment.

        Software huoses don’t have an six months plan, they have to hire people, train, design, develop with a much longer perspective. Small developers and hobby coders are a different thing but the big signal here is that HP is telling the big guys that an investment in webOS will pay off, not now but over the long term. That’s their promise to the partners and the market. “by June / July”! :):):)

    • http://www.webosroundup.com/ DanR

      We’re posting all viewpoints, but we’re no Debbie Downers. We love webOS and in the long term have a hard time ignoring the potential that exists once HP brings its resources to bear in selling our beloved operating system to the masses. Here’s hoping.

      • Joseph Ziehm

        I love WebOS Dan but HP has nearly run it into the ground. That old mantra rings true from sales, contreversy breeds sales.

    • Raun

      Webos is exactly what it is has been for two years; it’s full of possibilities. Hp’s scalabilty adds more. Where’s the beef? We haven’t seen it. No flash, two years after it was promised at or shortly after launch? A complete rewrite of the development framework two years after release? A new management team? No new hardware for their launch carrier? No momentum. It won’t take long for others to add the features we love about webos, and once they do, where does that leave hp and their new toy? Those questions don’t appear to have good answers; they just beg more questions.

  • Mike G

    Wow great editorial. I can see this. Why invest a billion in a company if you don’t have some big plans for it. HP is making a shift as it sees a future where people will connected seamlessly to cloud services. The abillity to work and play at the same time so to speak. I like it. We are not just talking about gadgets but a new way of life. In such an ecosystem I’m hopwful developers can port all sort of goodies to end-users.

    As for all the folk who like to complain so much like the worldis about to explode or something most folk are in the Think Small category thus always crying over perceived spilt milk IMO.

  • Danar

    How nice it would be to get rid of my seven remote controls and do it on my handset! They are definitely on the right track. I remember seeing a phone that had an attached bluetooth earpiece. It could be charged right on it’s handset dock. It would be so cool to have a earpiece docked to a handset docked to a tablet docked to a desktop docked to a solar panel docked to a…? Wait. Is that part of what they are doing inductively!
    Buy the way, GO STAR TREK!

  • Mike

    This is a very positive post, but you cannot dismiss the hardware as if it doesn’t matter. How else will you convince people of webos’ greatness, through a printer? These two phones and that one tablet will be the proving grounds for adaptation, the newly resurrected crop of webos users that know nothing about HP. Why are we settling?

  • http://Bungie.net TheKingOfHalo

    Or they could just say “hey we don’t want webOS” and stop buying HP?

  • Danar

    Dan, I don’t know if there is a special idea page some where and have been having trouble with my login at pre central so I’ll post it here.
    I would like to see a data telemetry capability. I’ve tried it with amateur radio frequencies but my design to buggy. What I want to do is put sensors around my house and yard. Like 50 or so. When a sensor picks up an object that point would register on a screen (my hand set). Like they had for model train lay outs.(you may be to young to remember them). They where simple switches along the track wired to miniature bulbs. It seems like it would be a killer app with a lot of uses.
    Just dreaming.

    • Danar

      GPS?

  • Reeder 29

    The points you make are valid for webOS software generally, but for commercial webOS software, the outlook is not so rosy, as JavaScript running in a browser (with whatever framework) is not software you can currently make money on.

    • pcworld

      Why?
      With the right APIs and the power of C/C++-plugins you can make as great apps as for iOS/Android.

    • pcworld

      Why?
      With the right APIs and the power of C/C++-plugins you can make as great apps as for iOS/Android.

    • pcworld

      Why?
      With the right APIs and the power of C/C++-plugins you can make as great apps as for iOS/Android.

  • Anonymous

    Good editorial, good editorial.

  • http://www.michaeldcarney.com/ Michael D Carney

    I have had some negitivity at HP, but Sprint got the brunt of it for me. The fact is what has me angry is the lack of path for me as a Sprint user and lover of their data plan. I beleve most of us thought HP would show off a 4G Sprint Device like the EVO or the Epic. HP Prē3 is a cycle behind. Fact is the Prē2 should have been out about the time HP purchased Palm, and the 3 should have been out by Christmas. Summer should be bringing use some other phone options. They are a cycle behind. Most of us needed them to announce plans to get caught up by summer, but we got shown the current crop and told it wouldn’t be out until then. That rant being said, if Sprint announces a 3 and HP offers a discount to Prē – users, then waiting wouldn’t be so bad. I get the vision. The hardware is not the point. I agree with you. The big elephant in the room was how can they fulfill the vision when they can’t even put a phone in my hand by March. I went to the Sprint store and held the EVO, Shift, and Epic. Suddenly I am thinking even the iPhone better dance very well with the 5. HP will need to prove this eco-system is going to roll out fast once summer hits. In the long run we know the loserin the race is RIM. The question now is will HP place first, second, or third? We will know within a year or two.

  • Chirurgie

    Agree with this editorial 100%. IMHO, HP is not focussed on phones nor tablets but on PCs + printers, their main bread + butter. By making WebOS the central focus to rotate all this around, they will be betting on ‘supplementary’ items like phones & tablets to be taken up subsequently.

    Eg, HP sells dozens of servers + PCs to a company. They can ‘sell’ WebOS integration on these computers & how if that company’s salespeople use WebOS Tablets & phones, there will be cloud link-up to central servers & all sales data updated etc. The company which goes with this will order hundreds of such devices, which when it gets into the ‘public’ will show off how cool WebOS as a standalone phone/tablet is.

    So, they are not as concerned about selling just phones&tablets. Its the ‘ecosystem’ (I notice this term being bandied about a lot in all tech blogs beyond WebOS) that matters, & in this regards, HP is clearly in the lead (Apple’s Mac usage, cool as it is for their users, is nowhere as prevalent as PCs).

  • Chirurgie

    Agree with this editorial 100%. IMHO, HP is not focussed on phones nor tablets but on PCs + printers, their main bread + butter. By making WebOS the central focus to rotate all this around, they will be betting on ‘supplementary’ items like phones & tablets to be taken up subsequently.

    Eg, HP sells dozens of servers + PCs to a company. They can ‘sell’ WebOS integration on these computers & how if that company’s salespeople use WebOS Tablets & phones, there will be cloud link-up to central servers & all sales data updated etc. The company which goes with this will order hundreds of such devices, which when it gets into the ‘public’ will show off how cool WebOS as a standalone phone/tablet is.

    So, they are not as concerned about selling just phones&tablets. Its the ‘ecosystem’ (I notice this term being bandied about a lot in all tech blogs beyond WebOS) that matters, & in this regards, HP is clearly in the lead (Apple’s Mac usage, cool as it is for their users, is nowhere as prevalent as PCs).

  • TheLThomsen

    Concentrating on webOS in browser and on PC explains why gestures are going away. Bummer, but glad to have an explanation.

    • JDM

      Is there a touchinterface where gestures on the screen performed functions? I want to say there is, but it never caught on. Why couldn’t that be possible for the tablet?

    • http://twitter.com/jeffrotull Jeff LaLone

      I’d wait until Enyo gets fully fleshed out before making any conclusions about the gesture area. Why? Because the gesture area still exists on the phones.

      The gesture area is great because it allows touch controls on a space-constrained device in an area that’s not in the way of what you’re doing. On a tablet (or on a PC, however that ends up working), you have much more room to work. Sure, there’s no dedicated area to perform a “back” gesture, but it will no longer be difficult to use three or four fingers to perform a gesture on the main screen. Hopefully, as Enyo gets fleshed out, we’ll see ways for applications to accomplish tasks using either the gesture area (on phones) or larger, more intricate gestures (on tablets). Or, heck, maybe even a right-click context menu (on PCs).

      Or, I’m completely wrong. I’ll guess we’ll have to wait until Enyo is complete and/or the next generation of handsets come out to see.

    • http://twitter.com/jeffrotull Jeff LaLone

      I’d wait until Enyo gets fully fleshed out before making any conclusions about the gesture area. Why? Because the gesture area still exists on the phones.

      The gesture area is great because it allows touch controls on a space-constrained device in an area that’s not in the way of what you’re doing. On a tablet (or on a PC, however that ends up working), you have much more room to work. Sure, there’s no dedicated area to perform a “back” gesture, but it will no longer be difficult to use three or four fingers to perform a gesture on the main screen. Hopefully, as Enyo gets fleshed out, we’ll see ways for applications to accomplish tasks using either the gesture area (on phones) or larger, more intricate gestures (on tablets). Or, heck, maybe even a right-click context menu (on PCs).

      Or, I’m completely wrong. I’ll guess we’ll have to wait until Enyo is complete and/or the next generation of handsets come out to see.

    • http://twitter.com/jeffrotull Jeff LaLone

      I’d wait until Enyo gets fully fleshed out before making any conclusions about the gesture area. Why? Because the gesture area still exists on the phones.

      The gesture area is great because it allows touch controls on a space-constrained device in an area that’s not in the way of what you’re doing. On a tablet (or on a PC, however that ends up working), you have much more room to work. Sure, there’s no dedicated area to perform a “back” gesture, but it will no longer be difficult to use three or four fingers to perform a gesture on the main screen. Hopefully, as Enyo gets fleshed out, we’ll see ways for applications to accomplish tasks using either the gesture area (on phones) or larger, more intricate gestures (on tablets). Or, heck, maybe even a right-click context menu (on PCs).

      Or, I’m completely wrong. I’ll guess we’ll have to wait until Enyo is complete and/or the next generation of handsets come out to see.

  • http://twitter.com/MetaView MetaView
  • RK

    HP is big and will be around awhile. They could afford to let Palm die and let webOS hibernate while they spend years adapting it to their vision. Then they could relaunch as a fully conceived idea with their huge corporate and production capability. That’s not what they are doing, but my point is webOS is not dead, and even if HP killed it, they are big enough to bring it back in a couple years once they had their vision all worked out. I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does and HP integrates things well, I would certainly come back. I don’t think consumers are so invested in one ecosystem that they can’t be convinced to change. My home is Apple-heavy, but my life is so cloud-driven now that I could change it out. Sure, I’d lose all those apps I bought, but so do most people who upgrade videogame consoles. Who doggedly hangs on to their 16 bit Super NES because they invested so much in it? Instead they discarded it for the Playstation, and so on. Hope that was a coherent argument against doomsdayism.