“LG is acquiring WebOS from Hewlett-Packard, with the intention to use the operating system not for its mobile phones, but in its smart televisions,” Roger Cheng reports for CNET.
“With the deal, LG obtains the source code for WebOS, related documentation, engineering talent, and related WebOS Web sites,” Cheng reports. “LG also gets HP licenses for use with its WebOS products, and patents HP obtained from Palm. The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.”
MacDailyNews Take: One plugged nickel?
Cheng reports, “LG has no intent to use WebOS for its smartphones, with the company largely focused on Android as its mobile operating system of choice. Indeed, much of the WebOS team members that work on the various mobile products at HP has already left, according to a person familiar with the deal.”
Read more in the full article here.
That’s an extremely interesting move by LG. webOS is much better than HP executed on their tablet. I catched one during the fire sale for 99 Euros. For sure the tablet is terrible, heavy like a brick, slow and so on. But the software was not that bad, some interesting ideas. And it makes LG independent from Android whenever they need to be. Sure they have to say no phone right now, but I would not be surprised if they would do it one day. Quite interesting, especially as they most likely did not pay one billion dollar like HP did when they acquired Palm.
Very interesting move for LG – are they positioning themselves to go against Apple or partner?
Improving the interface on LGs Smart TVs would be better done with some basic consumer observation and not stupid tech.
May be an interesting way for another South Korean electronics mfg. to differentiate itself in the burgeoning smart device market.
HP must have been waiting for the patent on webOS to be granted the other day before they could sell it off.
Suckers bought a piece of shit dog slow HTML-based operating system that failed in the market. Go ahead and throw it on your cheap, crappy TVs! Suck it LG!
Tough call, and interesting. On the one hand, LG’s existing device interface is generally bad–not unusable, but definitely something I get sad when I think about interacting with.
I thought WebOS was very good — not on the same level as PalmOS, but certainly could be a good competitor for iOS with the right TLC.
So the question is… do we trust LG to use WebOS in a smart way, to make their products good? Or do we fear they will jam it into their bad products and further repress & sully its promise?