There has been significant PR activity in the past few days as HP have announced a series of mobile/tablet products based on the webOS that they acquired with the purchase of Palm last year. Punditry is the work of fools, so I feel well qualified to comment…
Back in November I saw the head of this HP business unit present at Web 2.0. The lwebOS product that HP acquired was recognised as good by critics in the industry, but it remains to be seen if the market can sustain another operating system on mobile and tablet forms alongside Windows, iOS, Blackberry, Google's Android and Chrome, some rumours about Ubuntu, and the dying (yet still selling) Symbian. There will definitely be a shake out.
Personally I'm of the view that there is probably room only for one closed hardware/software platform which will be Apple for as long as the Jobs-free company can sustain it. Apple has the position of cool, and whilst HP tries, a company that also has things like Peregrine in its product portfolio is going to struggle to be cool in the same way that I struggle to be cool (for avoidance of any doubt, I'm not).
Every CEO who gets an iPhone is another nail in the coffin for Blackberry. RIM have built their business on a triple-play of closed device, OS and network, and the latter part of that looks an increasing irrelevance in our increasingly transparent times. They also find themselves with a really odd market position today with attempts to appeal to both business folk in suits and teenage girls (who apparently love Blackberry messenger – presumably for its 128 bit encryption).
Alongside the integrated platform, there is likely to be space for only one or two software-only platform products being deployed by myriad hardware manufacturers. Android has the wind in its sails, and maybe Windows mobile will improve in share, especially if Nokia go down that path, as looks likely.
Finally I should say a word about Symbian, Nokia's "burning platform". Symbian's decline will see the end of a globally successful OS that had it's roots in the British computing revolution of the early 1980s as it came, of course, from Psion. A sad end, but not bad going for the company that brought you Horace goes Skiing.
mmitII 