They didn't even try. Seriously.. Was it a bad decision to acquire Palm? Maybe. The way it was executed made it a waste of money. The _potential_ was good, the system itself is awesome. It lacked decent devices (and a global supply chain, opposed to 'You can only buy a Palm Pre 2 in France'), mere hardware.
They bought it, did a half-assed job to come up with a new line of hardware (still nothing to boast about on this front) and acted surprised when the market didn't jump to buy everything with HP and WebOS logos.
The original Palm acquisition _only_ made sense if you understand that you'll need 2-3 iterations to make that business successful.
Your '0 chance WebOS would be a "hit"' line seems off to me. It's more beautiful than Android (and iOS to me, but YYMV). It's far closer to your garden variety Linux machine than Android (which might appeal to geeks only, granted). The development model for the platform is great and could bring in lots of people that so far haven't started mobile development at all. Synergy/Just Type were executed well for the most parts. WebOS had a very decent chance, but like any other piece of technology you need to support it first, do a couple of iterations based on market feedback.
They didn't even try. Seriously.. Was it a bad decision to acquire Palm? Maybe. The way it was executed made it a waste of money. The _potential_ was good, the system itself is awesome. It lacked decent devices (and a global supply chain, opposed to 'You can only buy a Palm Pre 2 in France'), mere hardware.
They bought it, did a half-assed job to come up with a new line of hardware (still nothing to boast about on this front) and acted surprised when the market didn't jump to buy everything with HP and WebOS logos.
The original Palm acquisition _only_ made sense if you understand that you'll need 2-3 iterations to make that business successful.
Your '0 chance WebOS would be a "hit"' line seems off to me. It's more beautiful than Android (and iOS to me, but YYMV). It's far closer to your garden variety Linux machine than Android (which might appeal to geeks only, granted). The development model for the platform is great and could bring in lots of people that so far haven't started mobile development at all. Synergy/Just Type were executed well for the most parts. WebOS had a very decent chance, but like any other piece of technology you need to support it first, do a couple of iterations based on market feedback.