LG To Acquire WebOS for Use in Smart TVs
Topping a year of uncertainty and mostly silence from HP, Cnet has broken the story of LG's pending acquisition of the entire WebOS (former Palm) Global Business Unit, including patents, employees, and source code. Surprisingly, the rejuvenated WebOS will be used not to power any of LG's smartphones (where the company is a firmly entrenched Android supporter) or a new line of tablets but rather its expanding line of Smart TVs.
Rumors have swirled for the better part of the past six months of LG's interest in WebOS. Currently, LG offers a line of Android/Google TV-based Smart LED HDTVs as well as lower-end line of proprietary NetCast SmartTVs with the usual assortment of Netflix and other streaming apps baked into the sets' firmware.
After HP transitioned WebOS to an open-source OS, it failed to gain any major traction in the industry save the usual platform hobbyist and die-hard experiments. Now, with the sale of the WebOS GBU likely hindering any efforts made by another 3rd party to license WebOS for future hardware, the door appear to be firmly shut on any future WebOS-based smartphones or tablets unless they were to appear from LG as some sort of "TV companion" home tablet or second-screen Wii U-style remote control.
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A little bit more here...
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
posted by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Mar 2013 14:51 UTC
After a few months of planning, several weeks of work, and possibly a few kilometres of aimless pacing through the living room, I'm happy to present "Palm: I'm ready to wallow now". This massive article (22,000 words) covers countless aspects of Palm, its devices, its operating system, and the company's importance to the mobile industry. I start with a detailed look at the history of handwriting recognition, after which I move on to the four hardware products I believe are crucial in understanding Palm as a company. Of course, I also dive into Palm OS, covering the kernel, its filesystem (or lack thereof), 'multitasking' capabilities, user experience, and much more. Important Palm OS licensees like Sony and Handspring make an appearance, and I cover the failed attempt at modernising the Palm OS: Palm OS 6 Cobalt. Finally, the conclusion ties it all together. For the first time in OSNews' history, you can also buy this article to support OSNews and make more articles like this possible in the future (don't worry - the regular online version is free, as always!). I suggest you grab a coffee, sit back, and enjoy.
http://www.osnews.com/story/26838/Palm_I_m_ready_to_wallow_now/page1/
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
Thank you so much for posting this link. I am truly grateful. The intro/abstract looks like the article will be the full-scale analysis that I have always wanted to read (and have always wanted to write, actually).
Thanks again.
Best,
HyperScheduler
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
I cannot believe how the full untold Cobalt story has never been told. I assume it's due to a simple lack of interest....but you'd still think that by now someone somewhere (Reddit, The Verge etc) would have spilled the beans!
I'm glad to see that the author of the article recognizing WebOS as the unmitigated disaster it was from the very start--limited resources and shortcuts galore! I also concur with the sentiment that Palm basically signed its death warrant with that string of pointless spin-offs, name/logo changes, and reacquisitions. It can even be argued that after the release of the Palm V, the death spiral truly began, as Palm was late to the color screen party, the multimedia/mp3 playback party, the large-screen party and definitely to the web-browsing/converged device party.
It's also amazing to realize how relatively far ahead of their time the Tapwave Zodiac & some of Sony's NZ/NR Clies were (spec-heavy mini-tablets). The LifeDrive was a spinning magnetic MicroDrive dinosaur in a growing flash memory world that I am still stunned to see ever got the greenlight! And the less said about the Fooleo bringing a pocketknife to a Wintel netbook gunfight, the better (Again, Hawkins had a solid basic concept but develoing the Fooleo as a smartphone companion was as ridiculous as RIM trying to get the Playbook to piggyback onto their antiquated BB phones!)
Thanks again for the link/article!
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X2 + Palm TX
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
"PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
"If you are sufficiently successful you become captive to the thing that made you successful." - Roger McNamee quoting Clayton Christensen - The Innovator's Dilemma
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
"In another room, a few executives watched Carl Yankowski's interview on CNBC, taping it for playback at the employee meeting that was to commence in minutes. After CNBC announcers gushed over "the most talked-about IPO," the camera cut to Carl Yankowski in the Nasdaq studio. Usually a compelling public speaker, Yankowski seemed out of his element. When asked about larger screens for palmtops, he answered stiffly, "We are well positioned whichever way the market goes." As the interview came to a close, the reporter said, "I've got to ask you about your suit." Yankowski smiled. He was wearing a very special suit, he let on, designed to satisfy the public's high expectations from Palm's IPO. The shiny pinstripes woven into the otherwise standard wool suit were made from threads of pure gold. CNBC cut back to the studio anchor. "Was that for real?" he asked the correspondent. The Palm managers assembled around the TV set looked at each other. "We're not showing this video," one of the executives decreed. Then they walked out to start the employee meeting."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471089656/
"Larger screens for palmtops" was just as critical in 2000 as it is now. Anyone who doesn't get the memo now (RIM, Motorola, HTC, Microsoft) is going to end up feeling the pain that Palm felt back in 2000.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X2 + Palm TX
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
Thanks for the article ... Can't wait to read it.
We'll the good news is that we seems to finally be getting WebOS on a large screen device. :-)
Good to see all you oldies on here for yet another merger/buyout/spinoff reunion. :-)
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
Your last statement is nuts. How many people on this site begged and pleaded for Palm to listen @ big screens and small bezels all the way back to 2000. They just refused. It looks obvious now.
Look at what Sammy is doing on that front. Its not their only reason for success, but a big part IMO. The GS4 ... Bigger screen on a smaller then GS3 device. Or Note 2 / Mega, rediculous screen and tiny bezel to make it possible.
It's as if the light came on and they are smoking everyone. Now it's Apple, Nokia, BB etc that still don't seem to get it.
Hilarious.
End times?
Does anybody know if this can be altered? I was hoping to calendar my entire life all the way through the year 2100 (just to be safe).
On December 31, 2031, I will turn 57 years old, and then I guess I will not be able to calendar on Palm OS anymore.
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
Have a nice day!
HP 41CX->HP 75C->Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->Pilot Pro->IIIe->IIIc->M500->M505->M515->TC->T3->T5->Treo 650P->Treo 700P->Droid>Pre Plus>Droid>iPhone4S
RE: Palm: I'm ready to wallow now
Pat Horne
Apple licenses PalmOS patents
So at least something came out of their PalmSource purchase (and all that R&D).
RE: Apple licenses PalmOS patents
(I guess all those who 'lost out' in their bids for PalmSource at the time are much happier being able to license what they need from Access now.)
It saddens me that this is all
I suppose this my final post here.
Thanks everyone, it's been great to know you and this platform. I hope they'll at some point build good mobile devices again like Palm handhelds / cellphones.
--
T|E -> T|X -> (N80IE?)
RE: It saddens me that this is all
Have a nice day!
HP 41CX->HP 75C->Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->Pilot Pro->IIIe->IIIc->M500->M505->M515->TC->T3->T5->Treo 650P->Treo 700P->Droid>Pre Plus>Droid>iPhone4S
Check out my apps! (Updated)
ASTRO File Manager
Bloomberg
Chrome to Phone
CNN
CNNMoney
Dropbox
Fancy Widgets
Fancy Widgets Unlocker
Finance
FlightTrack
Goggles
HistoryEraser
HP ePrint
iHeartRadio
Jorte
Lookout
MightyText
My Tracks
MyBackup Pro
NBC Local News
Nova Launcher
Nova Launcher Prime
OfficeSuite
OnTheFly
Pandora
Parcels
Radio+
ShareMyApps
Shazam
Smart Voice Recorder
Status Agenda
Translate
WiFi@Home
Zagat
Generated by ShareMyApps
RE: Check out my apps! (Updated)
PalmaryClock (always-on desktop clock & calendar while docked)
SC-123PU (calculator, used occasionally as a last resort).
RE: Check out my apps! (Updated)
1) DateBk6 (I also maintain a Google-Calendar-synced calendar on the iPhone resident calendar app.).
2) Time Apart (by Alex Wright; defunct website is www.PalmApps.TK).
3) NV Backup
4) Various apps from Hobbyist Software (Treo Butler, etc. . . )
5) Someday, I would like to learn how to use and master HandyShopper.
Sloooowprise!
The answer, my friends, is that this was not sudden at all. In fact, RIM's slow slide into ignominy has been going on for a rather long-time, as did Kodak's and Nokia‘s, and the railroads, and fax machines, and the decline of physical mail, as well. The one thing that that all these now "disrupted" organizations had in common was the sloooooowness of how their declines played-out. All too often, disruption is not so much about surprise, as it is about slowprise!
What accounts for slowprise? To a very large extent, the chief culprit is success. Our past success, and a desire to enjoy the associated rewards to the full, lead many firms into denial and sluggishness in the face of needing to adjust to a potential disruptive offering from somewhere else; particularly if we don't take that "somewhere else" very seriously. SONY's reluctance to move away from its once-great Trinitron technology, at a time when everybody else saw that the future was flat-panel TVs, is a case in point. Imagine how difficult it was for RIM to confront the reality of the smart phone challenge in the face of rising revenues and profits, which had been the case over the past several years – with revenues and profits actually peaking in 2011 — until, suddenly it seems too late! But, the point is that RIM's demise was anything but "sudden." And, management missed it. As did, Kodak's, and Nokia's, and so many others.
Another culprit that makes slooowprise so deadly is leadership overconfidence, or hubris; the belief that we know what we're doing, despite everyone else starting to do something different, can be a killer. Isn't that what RIM's Mr. Heins said: "We know what we're doing"? After all, we're "leaders," we must be good! We made it to the top, so we must know what we're doing to get to such positions! Yet, Disney's inability to take computer-animation seriously, at a time when Pixar was experimenting with what would become the industry's next big breakthrough, was likely the result of leadership overconfidence — in a set of technologies that were fast fading from the scene. Similarly, RIM's inability to appreciate what was going on around it as smartphones emerged, is also an example of what has been referred to as "blinding confidence" in the company's C-suite. The "imperial" assumption by many Western entrants into the Chinese market that "only an experienced Western manager was suitable to run a Chinese operation" provides yet another aspect of how "managerial overconfidence" can derail even the best planned strategic alternatives.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfischer/2012/07/07/sloooowprise-rim-slips-into-the-abyss/
RE: Sloooowprise!
And all I can think is that we are seeing the true beginning of the end of another great American tech icon. The parallels are uncanny between Motorola circa 2013 and Palm circa 2009.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X2 + Palm TX
RE: Sloooowprise!
RE: Sloooowprise!
Motorola is an insurance policy for current/future Apple patent litigation/war AND for the possibility of Samsung, HTC, LG et al "going rogue". Motorola is a loss leader - you have to think beyond the numbers - it was a strategic move - not a financial one. Google has deep pockets and a vested interest in keeping Motorola well-funded, in house, competitive, and alive!
two very conflicting opinions on the Moto X -
http://beta.fool.com/sammattera/2013/08/03/the-moto-x-is-a-phone-no-one-should-buy-but-many-w/42321/
vs.
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-made-the-best-phone-that-no-one-will-buy-2013-8
personally, i will be dumping my G-Nex and Sprint and picking up the next Nexus - the ~$300 Nexus 5 direct from the Google Play Store in a few months and pairing it with the new AT&T GoPhone prepaid plan at $60/month for Unlimited Talk/Text and 2GB of data and no contract.
once you go Nexus you can't go back!
RE: Sloooowprise!
They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
Hey!! I made associate writer at PDA247. Come see my nattering over there!!
www.clieuk.co.uk/wm.shtml
RE: Sloooowprise!
IF Google is smart, they'll cut Moto down the bone, keep the Droid line alive as the source for VZW "traditional" exclusives and focus the rest of their efforts on Nexus-style unlocked phones, a handful of tablets, and maybe smartwatches.
The X in its current state is apparently a good (but FAR from great or revolutionary) little phone that very few will purchase at the current $199 on contract or $579 full retail price other than diehard Moto fanboys or those who have a mega-hankering for a MotoMaker custom designs.
Just like in the early Pre/WebOS days, I see a LOT of smoke & mirrors and marketing fluff being tossed around by a flailing, cash-strapped handset manufacturer (Moto) fresh off of a regime and ownership change. Sure, Google owns 'em now but that does not mean they are going to keep pumping cash into a sinking ship for the long term.
Moto's X8 "architecture" is a nice move but it's by no means revolutionary. And whatever customizations and massaging/tweaking of the OS they've done to achieve iOS-esque levels of smoothness is something Google should have done to the base Android code a LONG time ago (remember the hollow promise of JellyBean's "Project Butter"?)
All of Motorola's excuses and defending of midrange specs at flagship pricing reeks of Palm's excuses back in the Pre days---"inspired by nature" pebble design was an excuse for going with an undersized screen. 8GB internal storage is more than anyone will ever need was the perfect excuse for not being able to bake in external expansion support into the OS and for under-spec'd storage. And let's not forget Palm's numerous attempts to trick iTunes!
But that's ancient history by now. Let's go back to Moto's Waterloo: All Motorola did was take a phone (X) that has a decidedly midrange BoM, throw in a handful of software tweaks (none revolutionary, all destined to be knocked off by 3rd party utilities or other handset manufacturers), and brought the phone's performance up to snuff with a less powerful SoC. How future-proof is the Moto X going to be? What kind of 3rd party ROM support will it have?
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X2 + Palm TX
RE: Sloooowprise!
**********************************************************************
Again, it's a nice phone but the pricing is overly optimistic. Moto may want to end the spec wars but 99.9% of consumers are going to focus on price first. The X would get a LOT more attention had they thrown an extra $100 or even $50 subsidy in there or earmarked some of that marketing warchest for hardware subsidies.
Example: The average consumer will stroll into a retail store, see a "free" 5" DNA next to the $199 X and the salesperson will tell them that the DNA has "more pixels", a "bigger screen" and "more cores" AND "it's cheaper" (don't forget the BEATS AUDIO!). Boom, game over Moto. That customer is GONE for the next 24 months and, sad but true, there's no guarantee Moto Mobility will even be around in another 2 years.
With the X, Moto and Google had the opportunity to really break the backs of the carriers by offering a device priced like the Nexus 4 (or with a slight premium for Moto's margins and the domestic assembly) PLUS the customization factor PLUS totally breaking from the carrier subsidy + contract + bloatware + approvals of updates model. If that mean no CDMA X, then fine. That's what the Droids are for, at least on VZW. If that meant only unlocked Xs, then fine (the new LTE Nexus 7 is how to do an unlocked cross-carrier device properly). Basically, the X could have been a Nexus for the masses backed by a massive marketing push informing the average American to escape the carriers' influence as middleman and bring some power back to the users. The timing of it could have worked perfectly with all of the recent Time Warner/CBS/Dish Network wrangling too. But they failed on EVERY single count, as far as I'm concerned. This is now just another handset in every sense of the word other than its battery life and smoothness.
All of the X's software jazz has already been emulated or is in the process of being copied. And an optimized dual-core architecture is FAR less revolutionary than, say, when Intel went from NetBurst to Core CPU architecture. The X just has the software massaging that Google should have baked into Android a year or more ago. And Nokia had cool colored and pattern printed shells for their dumbphones 13+ years ago (as did Palm for their m100 line of PDAs in 2000 and Diamond for the Rio MP3 players).
************************************************************************
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X2 + Palm TX
RE: Sloooowprise!
hi Surur. nice to see you around and still kicking too. what are you using these days? still Windows Phone? why not Android?
hkk - what Android phone are you using now? i recall you were a big fan of Motorola back in the day with the OG Droid and the Droid X as your intros to Android?
Nokia: The rise and fall of a mobile giant
3 September 2013 Last updated at 09:42 ET
Nokia: The rise and fall of a mobile giant
By Dave Lee
Technology reporter, BBC News
From market domination to sell-off in less than 10 years. As Microsoft swoops in to buy Nokia's mobile business for £4.6bn, what happened to Finland's most beloved company, and why would Microsoft take it on?
Whenever you turned on one of Nokia's legendary handsets, you always got the same thing: that famous signature logo, holding hands.
And for more than one generation, it was hand-holding Nokia did best - carrying people through, bit by bit, the mobile revolution.
Because way before we were shouting, "Damn you autocorrect", we were grappling with new-fangled predictive text.
In the days before highly customisable backgrounds and operating systems, there were swappable (and very, very cool) fascias.
And, of course, more than 12 years before anyone ever made birds angry, there was the mobile game to rule them all: Snake.
Nokia were by no means the first company to release a commercially available mobile phone, but it was the first to do it really well, and with true mass appeal.
"Back in the 1990s there weren't these other big brands," says Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight.
"Nokia were so dominant. People didn't talk about what brand, it was just about the number, 3210, or whatever you had. They took users on a journey."
Era of complacency
So far, so good - but then one presentation changed everything.
"Complacency had kicked in," Mr Wood continues, "they felt they could do no wrong.
"Then all of a sudden, in January 2007, Steve Jobs walked on to a stage and pulled an iPhone out of his pocket and changed the world forever."
The fall was swift. According to figures from analyst firm Gartner, Nokia's smartphone market share in 2007 was a dominant 49.4%. In subsequent years, it was 43.7%, then 41.1%, then 34.2%.
In the first half of this year, it had plummeted to just 3%.
Many blame this decline, at least in the initial stages, on Symbian, the firm's mobile operating system. It was, to paraphrase a welter of expert opinion, simply not up to the job.
"They missed the importance of software," Mr Wood says.
"Nokia make great phones, they still do. They went through this incredible decade of innovation in hardware, but what Apple saw was that all you needed was a rectangle with a screen, and the rest was all about the software."
Windows gamble
It took just a few years for Nokia phones to go from being the must-have handset in your pocket, to being the long-forgotten handset, nestled in that eternal graveyard of the mobile phone - the kitchen drawer.
So why would Microsoft spend £4.6bn on a business that looks like it's on the way out?
To use a romantic analogy: they were the only two left at the party who hadn't paired up with anyone.
"They were left dancing together, and thought they might as well go home," jokes Mr Wood.
"Microsoft was left with few alternatives, because they've got to succeed in mobile."
But far from facing an awkward morning after, buying up Nokia's phone business does make a lot of sense for both parties.
For starters, Nokia's flagship smartphones already use Windows Phone, Microsoft's operating system which, although still way behind its competitors, is at least gathering some modest momentum.
With Nokia's phone business moving in-house, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer tells the BBC that the acquisition means they can "improve the agility" of innovation in mobile.
Roberta Cozza, an analyst with Gartner, agrees.
"I think that for Microsoft to compete in today's mobile market against Apple and Google they needed to be more than just a software company," she tells the BBC.
"Depending on the way they figure out the organisational structure with the Nokia people inside, they can allow Nokia to innovate around hardware, and get input from them on the operating system, and gain the opportunity to deliver more competitive products."
Additionally, Ms Cozza says, Microsoft gains key expertise in emerging markets.
"Nokia has know-how of this market that goes beyond the hardware," she says.
Reinventing Nokia
It's hard to imagine Nokia as anything other than a mobile phone company.
But a peek into its history shows a deep-rooted ability to reinvent itself. Indeed, there was a time when Nokia was famous for its durable rubber boots and car tyres.
"I wouldn't be against the 'new' Nokia managing to pull something off," says CCS Insight's Mr Wood.
Clues to the company's future lie with recent strategic movements.
One recent deal, for example, saw Nokia buy up Siemens' share in Nokia Solutions and Networks, a mobile broadband company.
Also remaining in Nokia's portfolio is its well-regarded maps division - Here - which is the mapping software of choice in 80% of cars that feature built-in dashboard navigation.
And then of course, there are those all-important patents. Thanks to Nokia's early dominance, it owns many crucial patents on which the mobile industry relies.
Forbes estimates that Nokia's portfolio is worth somewhere in the region of $4bn (£2.6bn).
So while this may signal the beginning of the end for Nokia as a well-known brand in the hands of millions, many believe it is in good shape to move forward and build as a key player behind the scenes - without the distraction of chasing mainstream popularity.
"Essentially what's left is a new Nokia," Mr Wood concludes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23947212
Interesting article
Also, what about the iPhone 5S being 64-bit?
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Wow! It's lives!!!
Just had to come here as soon as I read it on reuters :)