any throughts HP webos for the pc dekstop

HP thought we would end its ‘Think Beyond’ event that has a surprise: webOS is coming to other connected devices, which includes printers, PCs and a few form factors you haven’t observed before. HP hasn’t provided any additional details also it plans to do so only from the coming months. Do we think it shows that HP plans to relieve PCs running webOS (similar to be able to Google’s ChromeOS)? While the idea sounds very exciting, this may not be likely to happen. The key reason why?

On one hand, to be a consumer, we see devices in which blur the lines between laptop and the phone, such as Apple iPad and Motorola Atrix. Alternatively, in the corporate world those segments are separated from each other. For example, it took over 3 years to convince Microsoft to enable Windows to jog on devices that use ARM architecture (usually categorised as the smart-book). Intel lost the battle convincing Microsoft and The search engines to enable their cellular OS (Windows mobile and Android) running on Intel Atom CPU, and thought we would use the MeeGo COMPUTER ITSELF instead. Therefore, while it's going to be exciting to see a webOS laptop it is not likely to happen, at the least not for now. That leaves us with the question: what is HP planning to do with the webOS for personal computers and printers?

The traditional corporate means of thinking is to find ways to leverage the organization assets. When we look within the webOS, it is yet another mobile OS, and not necessarily the dominant one. In other words, it is not an attractive platform for developers. Alternatively, HP is a dominant player inside computer and printer marketplace. By enabling webOS application to perform on HP computers as well as printers, HP can help to make the webOS a predominant platform and very beautiful for developers. This can be an extension to HP’s OXP (Open Extensibility Platform) for running apps on HP printers. Apple is doing similar thing using the Mac App store and HP can use this idea too. While we must wait and see what HP is planning for people, it would be fascinated to hear what people think on it.