And an Apple-style ecosystem planned too
HP senior vice president Jon Rubinstein has hinted that webOS may not be restricted to just HP devices in the future, and that there is a?possibility?that some "special companies" could indeed offer the platform on their devices.
Speaking at the Qualcomm Uplinq event in California, the former Apple man said:?"We're not announcing anything today and our model is not to be a licensing business but clearly there is tremendous strength in being able to build entire ecosystems to deliver a unified experience.
"I think that we'd be more than willing to partner with one or two special companies.?Somebody who brings value to the ecosystem."
A HTC handset running webOS then? Or perhaps a new Galaxy Tab from Samsung that talks with your HP Veer? We like the sound of that.
Rubinstein also talked about the?strength?of webOS, now it has the full HP backing. Clearly with one eye on what's going on over in Cupertino, Steve Jobs' old pal highlighted how the platform had every chance of taking on Apple's iOS setup and insisted that it wasn't too late to the party.
After demoing the Touch to Share feature on a HP Veer and a HP TouchPad he said: "People are going to love interconnected devices. It's not just about a single device - it's about how multiple devices interact with each other and with what is going on in the cloud.
"So you'll be seeing us bring webOS to tablets, you'll see us bringing it on top of PCs, on top of printers and so on. Users will have a HP experience across all of these devices."
When asked if this was somewhat of an Apple mentality Rubinstein replied:?"It's a little different...but HP's position in the personal computer space is coming from a large position of strength, not only in access to the consumer but tremendous relationship to enterprise and content companies."
So there you have it, not only is HP eyeing up an Android style assault for its mobile OS, it also has ambitions to take on Apple at its own game.
Still no word on the TouchPad release date or pricing though, with Rubinstein simply sticking to the "summer" official line.
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Tags: webOS Uplinq Jon Rubinstein HP Veer HP TouchPad Phones Tablets HP Apple
HP Boss: webOS to be available to other manufacturers originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:48:00 +0100