Despite all evidence to the contrary, Stephen Dewitt, senior vice president at HP has claimed that WebOS is "not dead".
The HP exec told Bloomberg that the company will continue to support and update the WebOS software, despite having pulled out of production of hardware running the OS.
"The WebOS is not dead. We're going to continue to evolve it, update and support it. We stand by it," he said.
No wonder poor DeWitt is so keen to keep the software alive, he took control of WebOS at HP just last month.
Waving, not drowning
"The whole world isn't just about tablets and phones. There are going to be appliances of so many different sizes and shapes in the future that are going to require a human interface for data," he continued, increasingly desperately.
Dewitt also talked about the 'open' strategy that HP hoped would entice developers to build apps for the OS.
He said, "If you want to jump into the Apple ecosystem and be one of the gazillion in there and live by Apple's rules, so be it."
"Our strategy is to be more open, to be a platform that has extensibility to other environments - not the closed architecture."
Crunch time
So what's next for WebOS? It's entirely possible that we'll continue to see the software running on HP's printers and other kinds of appliances, and there's also continuing chatter that HP will license WebOS out to other manufacturers.
But, with first Palm and now HP failing to make a go of consumer hardware running WebOS, will any other manufacturer be prepared to gamble on the app-light software?
What's more, plans to port Android to the WebOS-toting HP TouchPad already afoot - that's not the kind of news that will incite the industry's confidence in the OS. Perhaps it'd be kinder just to take it out back and... well, you know.
Via Business Week
