Orphaned Tech

On Thursday HP announced that is is ending production of its smartphones and tablets that run the WebOS operating system. HP acquired WebOS when they bought Palm last year for $1.2 billion. That's a lot of money to spend on something to throw away so quickly.

WebOS is a great platform, but the available hardware has always held it down, and consequently app development has been almost nonexistent. You know that if a company like HTC had been developing phones that ran WebOS, they would have been better, and would have appeared more frequently.

My current phone is a Palm Pre that I've had for about a year and half. There's a lot I like about it, and some I don't. Every time I hear or read about a cool new app for the iPhone, I find myself thinking that's probably what I will end up getting next. The iPhone's arrival on Verizon earlier this year pretty much solidified my feelings.

I really wanted Palm to succeed and survive, and when WebOS was first announced I thought that could do it for them. But now it's over, and my phone is an orphan. There are mumblings that HP may try to sell WebOS, but the chances of that are very slim. The next version of the iPhone is rumored to be arriving in late September or early October, coincidentally right when I'm eligible for an upgrade.