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The Future of webOS: What it Could Have Been…

By: , 8/22/2011 2:24 pm | 23 comments

The folks over at GDGT have reportedly extrapolated some interesting tidbits from a few folks working in the webOS Global Business Unit at HP since support for the hardware was axed last Thursday. The info was allegedly confirmed through information that was posted at various tech sites since the news broke [we have also corroborated a lot of the info with our own sources, but not everything could be confirmed - Ed].

Apparently, the announcement by HP to end production of webOS hardware came as quite a surprise to almost everyone involved with the products- from those at the very top of the webOS GBU group, right down to the sales reps who were still pushing sales of the TouchPad to businesses the same day the news of the cancellation hit headlines.

Allegedly, HP wasn’t going to make an announcement for several more weeks, even months… but they were forced to do so when news of it was leaked to Bloomberg. According to AllThingsD, even Todd Bradly, head of HP’s Personal Systems Group, had no idea of HP’s decision until Leo Apotheker broke the news to him at a dinner date the Sunday before. Former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein was purportedly also left in the dark.

Other tidbits from the GDGT post:

  • HP pushed for all hands on the software development side to be on deck to make sure the TouchPad got out the door in time, even though Jon Rubenstein didn’t think it was ready.
  • Engineers worked on webOS 3.0 for the TouchPad literally right up until launch day. HP designed the software from the ground up on a completely new framework (Enyo) specifically for the TouchPad. This meant the Pre 2 and Pre 3 were stuck on webOS 2.x indefinitely with no hope of seeing 3.0. anytime soon.
  • As for the Pre 3: The folks responsible for the hardware were still working through some performance issues before it could be ready to launch in the U.S. Considering the device was launched in Europe merely days before HP pulled the plug, we think it was either ready, or the kinks were enough for the masses to tolerate until the first OTA update. And that Touchstone Audio Dock we saw go to the FCC? It was real.
  • Limited resources in-house, both in development of software and hardware, were severely stressed causing design cycles to be delayed as employees were shuffled from one project to another. Designs were almost a half a year old before they hit store shelves. Carriers, including Sprint, started to doubt HP’s efforts to bring devices like the Pre 3 to market, so they gave up on them entirely. This would explain why many compared the TouchPad’s design to that of the iPad 1, which is almost a year and a half old now.
  • The slab phones were real. Several models were very close to market before being called off at the last minute. The first unreleased phone was codenamed “Windsor” but due to terrible management of the project, deadlines were missed and was eventually cancelled. The second unreleased phone was codenamed “Stingray” and was probably the slab phone seen in this spy shot. It was HP’s answer to the Evo, but engineers were so pre-occupied with the TouchPad that it never saw the light of day. Carriers soon lost interest and the product was cancelled.
  • The 7 inch “Opal” tablet (TouchPad Go) was in the hands of the QA department and was slated for release later this year (16/32GB, WiFi/3G).
  • The “Palm Foleo” was ready for a comeback in the form of a netbook that HP fitted with a version of webOS codenamed “Dartfish”.

The current environment for Palm employees is described as bleak, with most considering webOS dead and engineers stuck looking for new jobs even though HP has stated that development in webOS will continue. Nobody seems to know what’s going on and are merely waiting for instructions from the top on where to go next.

Still, the $99 firesale of TouchPads this past weekend put a lot of webOS hardware in the hands of many who may not have heard of the 9.7 inch tablet previously. Stores, both on shelves and online, were sold out almost immediately and developers saw their app stats get a nice boost. Did HP take notice? Will we see an about-face to get webOS hardware back in production? It’s a long shot, but what we did see is a lot of interest in webOS, and a great potential for developers to keep contributing to the catalog to keep the tablet relevant, at least on the software side, for months to come.

Source: GDGT.com

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About Jesse Mendoza

Certified Computer Geek by day, WOR contributor & radio DJ by night. Loves indie music, Toyoto FJ Cruisers, and running marathons. He still owns all of his Palm devices and will probably go to the grave with them. Follow him on Twitter @JesseJstreet
View all posts by Jesse Mendoza →
  • Glendel Bondoc

    a tear just ran down my face…the pre3!….the slab phone!….the foleo 2.0!

    • http://www.mastercko.com Chieze Okoye

      Yeah, no kidding. Each bullet point is like a punch to the gut.

  • Anonymous

    Sorta skeptical about some of the claims of this source. Seems like convenient story lines to what some commenters have already surmised about HP/Palm and its products. 

  • Anonymous

    Sorta skeptical about some of the claims of this source. Seems like convenient story lines to what some commenters have already surmised about HP/Palm and its products. 

  • Tonymac32

    I was going to buy a foleo way back to work with my winmo 6 phone. Bummer!

  • Tonymac32

    I was going to buy a foleo way back to work with my winmo 6 phone. Bummer!

  • http://Bungie.net TheKingOfHalo

    Idiots. How do they expect to complete so many projects with so little resources? They acted like they didn’t have enough money to hire more engineers, they should’ve gotten more people instead of buying useless crap for billions of dollars…

  • Anonymous

    Sad that my mockup will be the lasting image of what webOS could’ve been. It was meant to inspire hope for what webOS WOULD be not, what it could’ve been. I hate HP, also, my Nexus S is on its way and Pre 3 order cancelled.

    /heavy heart.

  • Yaba

    Heeeelloooo? No one noticing that this ‘spy shot’ of the slab phone is nothing else than a Samsung Nexus S (I am holding that in my hand currently and writing this) that has been produced as official Google Phone exclusively? That’s the only current phone with a curved display and so won’t be available for other operating systems than an official android.

  • Yaba

    Heeeelloooo? No one noticing that this ‘spy shot’ of the slab phone is nothing else than a Samsung Nexus S (I am holding that in my hand currently and writing this) that has been produced as official Google Phone exclusively? That’s the only current phone with a curved display and so won’t be available for other operating systems than an official android.

  • Yaba

    Heeeelloooo? No one noticing that this ‘spy shot’ of the slab phone is nothing else than a Samsung Nexus S (I am holding that in my hand currently and writing this) that has been produced as official Google Phone exclusively? That’s the only current phone with a curved display and so won’t be available for other operating systems than an official android.

    • Falconrap

      Wow. Apparently you haven’t noticed the lack of curve, the beveled edges (versus curve), the lack of the power button on the side…me thinks that’s not the Nexus S.

      • Carsten Schlipf

        I am holding it in my hand as we speak. The loudspeaker is 100% idential. The cam right of the loudspeaker is 100% identical. The sensors on the right of the loudspeaker are 100& identical. Beveled edges are 100% identical. Curved display (I am talking about the sceen, not edges) are 100% identical. Connectors on the bottom are 100% identical. Camera on the back is 100% identical. Powerbutton (acutally you can see it on the right side on the top) is 100% identical

        There are just three things that are different: webOS has been photoshoped in the display. A HP logo was put on the back (and that was done very badly).

        Still in doubt? Have a look at the second image on this page. Does this hand holding the device appear familiar to you?

  • Scotland

    If the insiders comments in the linked site are true, it looks like Palm GBU fell victim to lack of skilled resources (people – especially on the software side of the house) and good project management (inaccurate estimation of work effort required for their various projects, oversight/control over those projects).  Two phones were near completion but cancelled due to prioritization of software milestones for the Touchpad that caused the phone delivery dates to slip so much that the phones became uncompetitive. The tablet situation appears to be better, though – Touchpad 10 completed and Opal (Touchpad 7) is in QA (so likely would have gone live on schedule given that it shares similar specs in regards to processor/resolution as the Touchpad 10).

    Even if HP hadn’t continue to do all work in-house, it doesn’t look like that would have helped them much – the slips appear due to software milestones with webOS (and I don’t see how HP could have effectively farmed that out – the HW design work OTOH could easily have been farmed out).  Ultimately, HP fundamentally misjudged how much work, coordination and project management was required and didn’t ramp up their organization smoothly.  

    This would be tough under the best of circumstances and more time always helps – in this case, one year wasn’t enough to get the kinks worked out before HP pulled the plug.  That’s a shame because one year is not a whole lot of time and IMHO few organizations would be up to the challenge.  Palm previously created 1-2 devices max per year (Pre and Pixi were both released in 2009 with minor spec bumps in 2010) and suddenly had 6-7 device projects, plus 2 OS versions, plus a complete rewrite of their app framework (Enyo) all coming due in just over one year’s time.  If upper management had been committed to some growing pain in 2011, the best they could have done was established themselves in tablets (Touchpad is solid if not leading edge) and suffered through on phones until presumably better designs came in 2012 (Pre3 being a trailing edge design that would hold them over).

  • Scotland

    If the insiders comments in the linked site are true, it looks like Palm GBU fell victim to lack of skilled resources (people – especially on the software side of the house) and good project management (inaccurate estimation of work effort required for their various projects, oversight/control over those projects).  Two phones were near completion but cancelled due to prioritization of software milestones for the Touchpad that caused the phone delivery dates to slip so much that the phones became uncompetitive. The tablet situation appears to be better, though – Touchpad 10 completed and Opal (Touchpad 7) is in QA (so likely would have gone live on schedule given that it shares similar specs in regards to processor/resolution as the Touchpad 10).

    Even if HP hadn’t continue to do all work in-house, it doesn’t look like that would have helped them much – the slips appear due to software milestones with webOS (and I don’t see how HP could have effectively farmed that out – the HW design work OTOH could easily have been farmed out).  Ultimately, HP fundamentally misjudged how much work, coordination and project management was required and didn’t ramp up their organization smoothly.  

    This would be tough under the best of circumstances and more time always helps – in this case, one year wasn’t enough to get the kinks worked out before HP pulled the plug.  That’s a shame because one year is not a whole lot of time and IMHO few organizations would be up to the challenge.  Palm previously created 1-2 devices max per year (Pre and Pixi were both released in 2009 with minor spec bumps in 2010) and suddenly had 6-7 device projects, plus 2 OS versions, plus a complete rewrite of their app framework (Enyo) all coming due in just over one year’s time.  If upper management had been committed to some growing pain in 2011, the best they could have done was established themselves in tablets (Touchpad is solid if not leading edge) and suffered through on phones until presumably better designs came in 2012 (Pre3 being a trailing edge design that would hold them over).

    • Scotland

      Oh, I forgot to add to my list of milestones that they needed to port webOS to a new processor (Qualcomm chips) and optimize for it.

      HP pulling the plug now is especially a shame also because all the really hard infrastructure work that makes everything else possible (the Qualcomm port and Enyo framework that enables a new family of devices) is now done, though further performance optimization is still needed.

  • Nortab

    HP= Huge Pwords

  • Celestiz

    I really looked forward to i_maq’s mockup. I posted the idea to spread it. on HP’s facebook wall. HP should look at some of our creations and create it. Cuz WE know how to do webOS.

  • Eddiedfw

    I have lost ALL confidence in HP…i will NEVER believe what they say. With that, I’m jumping ship. I’m so sad because WebOS is THE BEST OS out there. Now I have to settle for second best. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m leaning towards waiting until the iPhone 5 comes out.

  • Eddiedfw

    I have lost ALL confidence in HP…i will NEVER believe what they say. With that, I’m jumping ship. I’m so sad because WebOS is THE BEST OS out there. Now I have to settle for second best. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m leaning towards waiting until the iPhone 5 comes out.

  • VegasPatrickWebOs4Life

    There is no such thing as bad publicity. WebOs just gained Hundreds of Thousands of new device holders. These users would quite possibly purchase a new phone(Slab/Pre3 etc) if given the chance. There isn’t any better advertisement than to have nearly 300,000+ TP’s in new customers hands. Who ever takes control of future devices for WebOs will have a hungry Client base ready to spend their $$$ on the Best OS ecosystem ever!

  • VegasPatrickWebOs4Life

    There is no such thing as bad publicity. WebOs just gained Hundreds of Thousands of new device holders. These users would quite possibly purchase a new phone(Slab/Pre3 etc) if given the chance. There isn’t any better advertisement than to have nearly 300,000+ TP’s in new customers hands. Who ever takes control of future devices for WebOs will have a hungry Client base ready to spend their $$$ on the Best OS ecosystem ever!

  • JMO

    Anyone got any peppered jerky? On a side note, let me see if I get this right. 1.2 Bill for palm. Lets say another 1 Bill for the hit they took on the TP’s (selling them at 1/3 their production cost) and all R&D for all incoplete & scrapped WebOs products (Pre3, both slab phones and 7″ tabs and such. (dont know if 1 Bill is a realistic number for that. Please feel free to chime in.) That would put an estimated value of 2.2 Billion for WebOs if HP wanted to sell for zero profit. Is HP’s PC business estimated at 7.8 billion? That would total the rumored 10 Billion sale to Sammy. The point I’m making is………. Oh. There’s some jerky.