HP WebOS is finally going open source but will WebOS recover from its deteriorating state is a big question. This article is about HP WebOS Open Source Code.
Hewlett Packard’s newly installed CEO Meg Whitman has recently announced that their HP WebOS platform will be open sourced. This act could be taken as an act of earning fame by the new executive or maybe she just took a correct step in its bid to try luck against the current masters of the mobile operating systems, as they had nothing much left to do with the WebOS.
WebOS as of now is found only on a few of HP devices(like HP Touchpad). Making it open source could cause a huge uproar in the Smartphone industry.
“WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected, and scalable,” said Meg Whitman in the company’s press release. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.
Later in an internal email to HP employees Meg Whitman also assured the employees that the best days of WebOS are still to come. She stated that the executive team had taken this decision after a lot of tinkering upon what to do with the WebOS. “HP engineers, partners, other developers and hardware manufacturers will be able to contribute to the development of webOS.
Together, we have an opportunity to make it the foundation of a new generation of devices, applications and services to address the rapidly evolving demands of both consumers and enterprises,” she wrote. “This is a very positive move for the development of our people, our software and HP overall.We strongly believe that the best days for webOS are still ahead.”
The biggest contender for WebOS in the Smartphone industry is none other than Google’s Android. Android is used by almost all of the mobile manufacturing companies now a days but the fact that remain unnoticed is that all the manufacturers also have one more backup platform on which they release their lower end Smartphones just to divert a bit away from Android.
HP’s WebOS could be the perfect contender for that place. Also, the newer manufacturers who are facing hard time in selling their Android devices would like to switch to a newer platform.
One more fact that might garner the interest of Smartphone manufacturers (who want to divert a bit from Android) in HP’s Web OS is the tie up of Nokia and Microsoft. As Nokia has already shown its long time aspirations of switching to Microsoft Windows Phone OS for its Smartphones, not many of the mobile phone manufacturers would like to come in front of the mobile manufacturing giant. So the best alternate that might turn up is the WebOS.
Open source developer enthusiasts will also be happy with the announcement and will also get a new market to strengthen their roots as the current Android Market is very competitive. If the platform gains popularity it would also become a commercial resource for big supplication development firms. None-the-less the platform will also get benefited from this as it has an increasing number of applications.
The actual fate of HP’s WebOS still remains uncertain. But going open source would help HP a bit. At least the WebOS would be a bit better than what it is now.
