As the World's largest computer manufacturer, it is strange to me that HP would spend $1.2B to buy WebOS and Palm's patents and mobile hardware design talent, only to give out its sole marketable distinguishing characteristic to competitors. If any company is capable of exploiting WebOS's strengths with an array of skillfully designed and profitable hardware, it would seem that HP would be the one to do it.<p>If I was a potential OEM partner with HP, I would have to question their long-term commitment to the partnership; I would expect them to drop licensing and capture the hardware profits for themselves should the platform be successful and build a healthy software ecosystem.
They've got to be versatile if they can have a hope to at least challenge Windows Phone, much less dethrone Android/iOS. I also suggest they sell any device that they themselves make under the Palm brand. Go back to your roots!
If HP wants to go this route it should completely open source webOS. Even then HP will need to give away buckets of hardware to developers and pay top developers to write ports. Android took this same approach to grab the lead from Apple and it has a huge head start on HP.<p>Honestly, if webOS went open source and came on hardware from multiple vendors I'd buy it over Android. But Google makes most of its money from Android with ad revenue. How would HP make as much money by giving away webOS? It probably can't.
With IOS tied to Apple and Windows Phone to Nokia it might not be such a bad idea for HTC (and Samsung etc.) to make sure to have a second choice besides Android.