Screaming Penguin

So HP CEO had this quote making the rounds today:

We didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn't seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP. The WebOS is one of the two ground-up pieces of software that is built as a web operating environment…We have tens of millions of HP small form factor web-connected devices…Now imagine that being a web-connected environment where now you can get a common look and feel and a common set of services laid against that environment. That is a very value proposition.

I completely agree with him. The thing is, in the "PC" market (read: Win32) HP is a dominant player now. They have locked up the the consumer market, and the shift in the whole world is that the consumer market is now the driver in technology, not the "Enterprise." But what WebOS has going for it is striking. Sure, the Pre is a good phone. The people I know that have one love it. It is web-centric, which is a huge advantage. The advantage, though, isn't just in dev pool... HP has talked about slates, and sure, that makes 100% sense. They fired MS after Balmer demoed their slate just months ago. First, MS has never gotten serious about metaphor shifting (see Windows for Pen Computing, Surface, Courier). Second, HP at their scale needs to own more IP in the game. HP has introduced their TouchSmart PCs which are basically Win32 boxes with a custom shell layer. Still, the chasm between Win32/WIMP apps and Touch apps is huge. WebOS gives them a lot of new room to play. A good WebOS app can run on the Pre or a Slate with WebOS backed by Linux. It could run on a Win32 TouchSmart machine backed by, let's say, Cygwin as a POSIX layer. Google threw down the gauntlet to reinvent the "First Screen" (TV) at I/O this year. They and Apple and (somewhat) HP are going to fight over the third screen (Phone/PDA). Apple wants to add a "Fourth Screen" with slates, and Android is chasing them. The big thing here is, HP is the only company that is really in a position to drive recreation of the "Second Screen" (PC). Frankly, I ranted about this before, I think the iPad would have been more compelling if it ran MacOS with UIKit as a layer and LLVM to crossover between "touch" and "WIMP" apps. I think HP is serious about this as a mode. Replacing the proprietary TouchSmart crap with the (much less proprietary) WebOS layer, but still having a cluster of apps targeted at touch UIs that you can run on a PC is a big deal. Moreover, combined with a new slate business and the Pre, it gives the first serious play across the space, and HP has hugely more marketshare than Apple on that "Second Screen" space already. They could use that to move into the third and fourth screen markets in a big way. Particularly if they can drag the enterprise market with them.