| I disagree. Unless HP was very picky about who they license too, we'll end up with another Android scenario, and a race to the bottom with hardware vendors doing as little as humanly possible to make a good experience. To them, it's just a free/cheap way of saving R&D costs. Having said that, hardware companies already have that option in Android, so HP could take the high road and enforce strict standards for usability, compatibility, upgrades, etc. on licensees. I still think it's a very risky gamble. HP hasn't demonstrated that they know how to create a winning end to end product with it yet. How would giving out part of that recipe (with restrictions) help anyone else be successful with it? "the hardware isn't doing anything to bolster WebOS" So... improve the hardware. If HP as one of the largest companies in the world (deep pockets) can't make a good piece of hardware for webOS, who else is going to be able to? Licensing webOS will just lead to a lot of fingerpointing between HP and other vendors as people have bad experiences. "It's the hardware!" "No, it's the software!" HP owns all ends of the process. If they can't make it good, it's time to retire it (and I say this as someone who wants webOS to succeed - I just don't think licensing it out is going to save it). |
They should license it to people who can. They're too big and too out of touch. They can provide some other valuable things, it's a well funded heavyweight alternative to android but I don't see HP building the next killer tablet or phone and as a consumer, I just don't think that when I see that sort of stuff from a company like IBM or HP.