I can't really think of any way that HP could have more thoroughly botched this transition—the last thing you ever want for a platform is uncertainty; you want to assure end-users and developers alike that your platform is worth investing in.

If HP's board felt it was time to get out of the mobile hardware game, fine; the way to do that would have been to arrange a hardware partnership and devise a plan of continuity for developers and users. Announcing out of the blue that they're ceasing hardware manufacturing and literally have no idea what they're doing next represents a mind-blowing caliber of professional incompetence that should have investors calling for Apotheker's ouster.

HP just left a car full of dogs to sit in the hot sun. With the engine running.

Too bad. I had a lot of hope for webOS but that has been reduced to barely a shred. Such potential squandered by a big broken machine that paid handsomely for it, sang its praises, made huge plans, and then killed it on purpose.

That said, how is it at all credible that webOS' main backer has simultaneously ceased production of ALL its hardware which was intended to run webOS, but also expects us to believe a line like "We will continue to support, innovate and develop the webOS App Catalog"?

Who's going to buy apps from that App Catalog? How are you planning to keep this OS current as a competitor to iOS if you have NO users in the field using it, buying and downloading apps, helping to test and fine-tune it, etc?

I just can't see this realistically happening. Apparently, very few others can see it, either, which is why HP stock tanked by 20% today.

You know, back in the day everybody and his dog was telling Apple to license MacOS (I mean OS 7-9, not OS X). Apple supporters would tirelessly explain that turning MacOS into a commodity OS would make it neither fish nor fowl: It wouldn’t have the reach of Windows nor would it have the seamless integration of an Apple-only product. There was a brief and half-hearted attempt to license it which only cannibalized Apple’s existing sales. Steve killed it the moment he returned as CEO.

Now HP has declared that despite being a dominant manufacturer of PCs, it cannot win in the personal computing business and it has no marketing muscle nor manufacturing chops to succeed and make money in the phone or tablet businesses.

Only everyone talks about how great their OS is. This sounds exactly like Apple when they were all but acquired by NeXT in a reverse takeover. Only instead of doubling down on their manufacturing and marketing like Apple did, they’re exiting the business and licensing their OS. I am not going to predict that they will fail, but I am going to say it will be interesting to see what happens with licensing and to compare it (if only for entertainment purposes) with what happened with Apple.

IBM was synonymous with the PC especially in business and government and especially with Thinkpad laptops. Hell, other PCs were always called "IBM Compatible" because an the modern PC was really just a compatible copy of IBM's version of the personal computer. But IBM wasn't executing well and failing to keep up with the Dells of the world on the consumer side of things.

So IBM spun off its consumer products like its PC division (to Lenovo), its peripherals like keyboards and mice (to Unicomp), and its printers (as Lexmark). Then it doubled down on big iron, midrange servers, and made a huge play on software and consulting services.

In the end, IBM survives, is profitable, and nobody thinks it's going away any time soon. What remains of HP has long been growing into a copy of the modern IBM with a huge, low margin PC business hanging off it that grows only by cannibalizing the market share of other low margin PC manufacturers exiting the market entirely. To think that the remaining half of the company wouldn't survive after spinning off the PC business is just silly.

Should HP's management be fighting a two front war against IBM and Apple? Maybe not. Apple dumped Xserve, has nearly dumped the Mac Pro, and pretty much ignores enterprise users entirely despite being on a stratospheric trajectory. WebOS probably means as much to HP's bottom line as Xserve did to Apple's and HP is treading water.

Consolidating on a consistent corporate vision is the first step to being like Apple. HP's vision is all muddled between being a consumer company and being a business company. Hopefully HP can figure out who it wants to be so it can start doing it well.

My guess is that your licensing guess is correct. I do hope it succeeds. I feel it's a better option in the long run than Android.

I'm not seeing a lot of possibilities for licensing or outright sale of webOS. Android is free and open source (for the most part.) If you are a hardware manufacturer who wants to own your own OS, fork Android and go from there. If you just want to license an OS, go with Android and forgo paying HP for a license.

Or maybe I'm just so enamored of the idea of WebOS that I can't imagine it dying the same death of BeOS and PalmOS.

Or is it just me that got this message reading this "announcement"?

I commend the PR guy who banged this one out... I'm guessing he risked creating a paradox that rent the space-time continuum to get this down.

Well, that's a way to put it I suppose.