It's been a bumpy road for webOS, the mobile operating system initially developed by Palm and later mishandled by Hewlett-Packard. LG stepped in nearly three years and acquired webOS, which it's been using as the platform for its smart TV lineup ever since. That trend will continue in 2016 as LG gets ready to unveil a new smart TV lineup featuring Read more...
LG’s first effort in the Android Wear space, the G Watch, looked like a cheap prototype that should have never left the research lab. Its second offering, the G Watch R added a dash of style and a round display, but still didn’t look like a high-end wristwatch. LG announced the Watch Urbane in mid-February in an...Read more...
The smartwatch market is finally starting to gain some traction. Samsung is shipping smartwatches that run its own Tizen operating system and numerous OEMs (including Samsung) are shipping smartwatches that run Google’s Android Wear operating system. And we can’t forget that the Apple Watch will soon hit the market (as soon as March, according Read more...
LG is planning to showcase a new line of smart TVs with a newer version of webOS that's supposed to increase the user experience with a boot time that's been reduced by 60 percent and several other upgrades. According to LG, webOS 2.0 sports a "long list of improvements," such as up to 70 percent faster load times...Read more...
Remember webOS? How could you forget, right? The long-lost mobile operating system that was placed in an early grave once HP purchased Palm is seemingly back from the dead, with a zombie-like appearance on an upcoming LG HDTV. Rumors were flying years ago that LG was planning on producing a webOS-based television...Read more...
Jon Rubinstein, the former Chief Executive Officer of Palm, was willing to discuss the company's sale to Hewlett-Packard, and to say he may regret that decision is putting it lightly. Not only was it a bad decision on hindsight, but he called it a "waste" since HP ultimately ended up wiping its hands of webOS, the...Read more...
Shining stars rarely fade away; they just appear in difference places. Such is life for on Jon Rubinstein, which floated from Palm to HP, and now, to Qualcomm. The man largely connected with defining webOS during Palm's comeback days feel out of the public's view lately, but now he's back in a big way. Qualcomm has announced the election of...Read more...
Surprise! LG has agreed to acquire webOS from Hewlett-Packard, potentially breathing new life into an operating system that was on the brink of death. Under terms of the deal, LG gains rights to the webOS source code, all related documentation and websites, and even a team of engineers. It's not known how much LG is paying for webOS, though...Read more...
It’s been a long road back from the brink for webOS, but today HP kept its promise about reviving the mobile operating system and unveiled webOS 1.0 just weeks after debuting a beta version. “Our combined efforts with the community and hard work have paid off, and we are now ready to move on to the next phase together,” the...Read more...
HP's attempts at competing in the mobile phone market haven't exactly gone well. Even so, the company isn't completely giving up on the mobile market. In a recent interview, HP CEO Meg Whitman said, "My view is we have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world, that is your first computing device. There will be...Read more...
Back in January, HP pledged to open source the floundering webOS by September 2012, and wouldn’t you know it, the company delivered on its promise. The webOS beta is now available, and it includes 54 components (under the Apache 2.0 license) and two separate build environments--one is a desktop build, and the other is an OpenEmbedded...Read more...
If you're a mobile phone manufacturer with a name other than "Apple," you probably aren't having a very good week. Shares of HTC, the second-largest phone company in Asia, fell to their lowest point in two years today, after the company announced a 58% decline in second-quarter revenue. HTC has released several...Read more...
HP promised to open source webOS, its onetime mobile operating system, and the company has indeed been making good on that promise, with the fully open platform available in August. Of course, the looming question for any technology that gets turned loose into the open source universe is whether or not anyone will actually care enough to invest...Read more...
WebOS may be "dead," but it's far from gone and buried. HP noted that the software would live on in some form or another, with open source coding to be released into the wild so that device lovers could do with it what they wanted. As 2012 hits full stride, WebOS is poking its head out of the door once more, with deliver of quite a few things...Read more...
And just like that, he's out. The former head of Palm is leaving HP, and with webOS all but buried, it's no real surprise. HP's acquisition of Palm proved disastrous, and after Jon Rubinstein was shifted into a product innovation role after the first major blow to webOS, we sort of figured he wouldn't hang around too...Read more...
These are strange, strange days that we're living in. HP buys Palm, then basically kills it when they murdered webOS. But then, due to consumer outcries (or just guilt?), webOS is brought back into the fold, but not in a shipping product. No, HP is actually going to invest time and resources to open source webOS. Yes, really. The company this...Read more...
Hewlett-Packard spent the majority of 2011 chasing its tail and getting nowhere in the process. Maybe 2012 will be better, and in some respects, it almost has to be. On the fail scale, it's hard to top shopping your PC division when it's the biggest in the world, buying a British software firm for $12 billion as part of a shift in strategy...Read more...
IDC suggests that worldwide tablet sales have skyrocketed over the past 12 months, up 264.5 percent in Q3 2011 as compared to the same period in 2010. Q3 results, strong as they were, didn't quite match up to the analyst firm's projections, but yearly sales are expected to hit 63.3 million units. Apple continues...Read more...
In almost the same moment that webOS looked like it was effectively being put out to pasture by HP, hope glimmers for the mobile operating system. HP CEP Meg Whitman told TechCrunch in an interview that the company could make webOS-based tablets starting in 2013. This is a somewhat confusing development. We viewed HP’s open sourcing...Read more...
A month after new HP CEO Meg Whitman told the world she needed more time to figure out what the company would do with webOS, the decision has been made. HP will open source the mobile operating system. However, HP isn’t simply dumping webOS; the company will continue to back the project with (a certain amount of) its resources, but it...Read more...
All hail the TouchPad, the second most popular tablet in the universe! Wait, what? Believe it or not (and we wouldn't blame you if you didn't), Hewlett-Packard has sold more tablets so far in 2011 than any other company, save for Apple, according to market research firm The NPD Group. Of course, HP unintentionally...Read more...
It's the quarter-end for HP, also known as the corporate overlord that just can't make up its mind about anything. On its second CEO this year (and third in not-too-much longer), the company's Q4 2011 earnings are nothing to scoff at. Despite the turmoil, money seems to be flowing into HP's coffers like beer out of a...Read more...