Skip to main content

WebOS - the other OS

On the day that Nokia and MS announced their tie up, HP also released their latest set of Web OS devices. Yes, Web OS. The OS2 Warp of the 2010s. Even the intro video is frankly a bit embarassing - for starters, Todd Bradley appears to be the only person in the audience clapping when he arrives.

Anyway, if you haven't got two hours to listen, here's some highlights:



The aim
  • Leverage the capabilities of HP to create a step change in mobile computing similar in scale to the introduction of the HP35 calculator (wasn't that the iPhone?)

  • First OS designed from scratch to fully embrace the Internet (and the need for that is...)
The market

  • Most people have multiple devices and they consume a lot of web based content

  • No one has developed a solution that works consistently across those devices (Android?)

  • WebOS is a unique technology leveraged across a range of (HP) devices

Technology

  • The "Synergy" feature merges information from cloud and brings it onto devices in an interactive and easy to use way

  • Techies like WebOS

  • They've launched a mini smartphone that uses cloud computing to replicate the features of the big phone in the package of a small one - Veer

You may have noticed that I'm skeptical about WebOS. The trouble as I see it is that although it seems like smart technology, the clever bit about OS X, Android and (perhaps in the future) mobile Windows is the underpinning business ecosystem they support.

HP has the scale in devices to make such an ecosystem appetising for developers, however it lacks the guts at an enterprise level to pull Windows out of the desktop and laptop and replace it with WebOS. If it isn't willing to do that, then the OS remains on niche devices and the ecosystem won't develop. In that case HP should stick to being a commodity hardware manufacturer and stop messing around with operating systems it isn't committed to.

The Nokia announcement has been received as bad for the Finns. As HP is Microsoft's biggest vendor, perhaps its worse for HP - now they won't be the partner of choice on non-desktop devices. All their eggs are firmly in the Web OS basket.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Impacts of a handset leasing model on mobile telcos

Following yesterday's post, here's some related thinking on the impacts on operators of handset leasing. Handset sales represent around 25% of operator revenues in a typical European market, but generate only around 5% of margin. It may therefore be the case that the scenario described would lead operators to a more profitable structural model than exists today. Oil companies are consistently and acceptably profitable, despite being (literally in some cases) the ‘dumb pipe’ that operators are so desperate to avoid becoming. One of the reasons for the oil majors sustained profitability is clear focus on their role in the value chain – to supply the fuel that enables transportation, relying primarily on location, then brand and finally product innovation to compete. BP or Shell do not need to subsidise the purchase of a car in order to drive consumption of fuel because consumers are ‘hooked’ on it (it gets them from place to place) and there are many credible car manufacturers an
9 comments
Read more

Value drivers for telecoms retail

I've been doing a really large number of driver trees recently - we've taken to using them on every project to get really into the guts of value creation for businesses and thus decide where to focus initiative development (How To Win, if you're keeping score). Anyhow, I had to pause for thought recently to work out how to represent the subscription aspect of telecoms retail for a client. Since it took me a minute, I thought I'd share... its lack of elegance suggests that its not quite right, although it was enough to demonstrate that there was a certain lack of coverage in the initiatives that my client was pursuing and thus spark a debate. Enjoy.
1 comment
Read more

Chief Strategy Officers II - Career Development

Here's a follow up to my earlier post on the starting point of Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) careers in the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 companies - a visualisation of two steps in their careers: their first employer or job and the job they had before they got their current position. Lots of work went into this... so any insights that you glean from the visualisation would be great to hear about :). The CSO is a crucial strategic role on the executive (!) and the owner of the tone and philosophy of decision making across much of the business, knowingly or unknowingly. Scrutiny of their experience in defining the process and language of strategic management is therefore appropriate not just amongst their executive peers, but in my view amongst shareholders. The days when being very smart and able to analyse large amounts of data were enough to be a CSO are basically gone... has the profession moved on enough to cope?
4 comments
Read more