[nknight]

None of this really seems to clear up my confusion.

I guess my question is closer to, how is webOS hard to duplicate? How is it special?

As someone who's never actually had a webOS device, I've been given little reason to think about them, so I might just be missing how polished it is or something. This still points to a major marketing problem, though. HP hasn't told the world why it should care about webOS.

[untog]

"how is webOS hard to duplicate? How is it special?"

Couldn't you say that about any OS that's based on open source software? WebOS's big differentiator is things like UI, which are difficult to duplicate well.