Every PC shipped by Hewlett-Packard, beginning in 2012, will include the ability to run webOS, the mobile operating system HP acquired last year in its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. However, HP is not abandoning Microsoft just yet. The company still plans to offer Microsoft’s Windows operating system as well as productivity tools such as Office.
This is just one of the changes being put into place by the PC maker’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, according to a March 9 report in Bloomberg Business Week.
Under former HP CEO Mark Hurd—who resigned in August 2010 after being found in violation of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct, following an allegedly inappropriate relationship with an HP contractor—cost-cutting was a priority, more than research and development or software growth. By including webOS on its PCs, Apotheker hopes to "create a massive platform," he told Bloomberg, and so attract application developers to the OS—a necessity, if HP is going to effectively compete against the Apple iPhone and Android-running handsets in the smartphone market HP entered with its purchase of Palm.
While the Apple App Store currently features more than 350,000 applications, and Google’s Android Market has swelled to 250,000, webOS’s application offerings number approximately 6,000.
Other planned changes include a renewed emphasis on product quality—which not only keeps customers happy but lowers service and warranty costs for a company, Apotheker told Bloomberg—as well as creating new channels of communication between product groups and growing HP’s software holdings.
On Feb. 14, HP acquired Veritica, and Apotheker said he’s looking for additional software companies that can help HP improve device security and enable customers to analyze large amounts of data. SAP, the software maker that Apotheker was CEO of until Feb. 2010, is not a consideration, he added, and neither is Salesforce.com.
For more, read the eWEEK article: HP’s webOS Running on All PCs by 2012: Report.