As a long-suffering webOS fan (Pre- through to Pre3 & Touchpad), all I have to say to this news is, yay! WebOS is a fantastic system that does not deserve to linger and die due to HP's lack of leadership and vision.
Jeff Bezzos, on the other hand, is a true visionary in my opinion and I would be happy to see my webOS HP Profile become an Amazon profile sometime soon.
I don't think they will make phones or even continue webOS. I have a feeling that this is a talent acquisition and they will use it to improve the Kindle Fire.
They will undoubtedly make phones. Why give away a market to competitors that is worth billions? Amazon wants to keep users in their ecosystem. To do that you need a phone as well, which they're essentially already doing in their AppStore.
Within three years Amazon will come out with their own phone. It will be the same game plan that they used with the Fire and gear it towards the low end. Eventually they will go towards the high end.
The Fire makes sense, it's a media portal that plugs directly in to Amazon's forte; books, and more recently, apps and streaming video. It's not a tablet though, and Bezos readily, and correctly, admits that. What exactly would they gain by making a phone? Sure they would stand to sell more apps, but I think Amazon is most interesting in selling books and being a player in the streaming media game. The cell phone, with its small screen, isn't well-suited for those. Not to mention that their apps are Android apps, something I wouldn't think Palm would make a great resource for. If they are buying Palm for hardware and cell phone experience, I'd think there would be a cheaper way to get those somewhere else.
Phones don't make sense in Amazon's model at all to me. Of course, I could be wrong, but unless it's driving sales of Amazon products, like the Kindle does, there's no incentive.
>Sure they would stand to sell more apps, but I think Amazon is most interesting in selling books and being a player in the streaming media game. The cell phone, with its small screen, isn't well-suited for those.
The smaller screen isn't ideal as a tablet for most media but people still do use it. The phone is the main way most people have access to the web.
I'm not making the case for a WebOS acquisition, just an Amazon phone. It just seems like there is a hole in Amazon's product offerings if a phone isn't available.
It kind of is as a secondary function, but it was built as a media consumption/purchasing device, a kind of hand-held portal into the world of Amazon; even their browser relies heavily on their EC2 platform. Compared to the Android tablets on the market, it lacks a lot in the way of expandability and even storage. Even the underlying Android OS was forked to bring it further away from a tablet and more to an Amazon portal. That it runs Android Apps is just a pleasant side effect.
To quote Bezos himself, "We think of Kindle Fire as an end-to-end service"
Sure, but none of the Android tablets are really purpose built for that. Samsung, Motorola, Asus and all the others seem to aim to be a kind of more-portable laptop, giving you memory card slots, cameras and to some extent even office type applications. These are the kinds of things that people market as a "tablet" and media consumption is something of an afterthought. The Kindle Fire is the other way around; media consumption is forefront, everything else, including apps to an extent, are an afterthought. This is more along Apple's vision with their iPad, and it's working out pretty well for them too.
At the end of the day, maybe I'm just arguing semantics, but the fact remains that this isn't a "tablet" in the same light as other Android "tablets." It's a bit of a subtle difference, and I think it's that difference that is crucial and will spell massive success for the Fire. Their ability to sell it at what I assume is a sizable loss isn't hurting their chances either.
Other tablets have no true purpose or useful content to consume. There is no thought put into the user experience of the Galaxy Tab or the like. They are simply "me too" devices and fall into the meme of "ipad killer". Where, as w33ble put it, the Fire is an Amazon Portal.
Apple and Amazon are in the same space but came from two different sides. And Apple is trying to cover the "harder" side, which is server and cloud computing. While Amazon had that down before diving into consumer HW.
I do think they are missing an opportunity without a camera. Think about the opportunity to scan bar codes or book covers and instantly see the Amazon price, and purchase right there. Imagine being in Barnes and Nobles and buying the book on your Fire.
"They will undoubtedly make phones. Why give away a market to competitors that is worth billions?"
It's an extremely competitive, painful market. MS are struggling, Palm have already tried once and failed. Amazon is taking another approach (having their own AppStore on Android) and it's working out for them.
Hardware was Palm and WebOS's weak spot. An Amazon acquisition could be many things, but I very much doubt it's a play for any hardware gains.
Unless they think that their freeloading of android is limiting them in some ways. Currently it seems like a good deal for amazon to get android for free. Don't know what they will gain by buying a new platform.
Well, Google are secretive about it. Amazon built their OS on top of an old version of Android because Google haven't released the source for their latest efforts yet.
Certainly, if they consider themselves competitors to Android Tablets, it would make sense to get the OS under their control, while perhaps ensuring a certain level of compatibility for app porting, etc.
Considering they already fired all of the hardware people, most of the talent have already gone (unless you mean't software, and it that case webOS is a pretty different system to Android, so it's not like Amazon would be picking up a few hundred Android developers here).
Well most of Palm's hardware in recent years sucked anyway. WebOS is where the talent went in.
Even if it was a talent acquisition, I think WebOS has a better chance of at least being open-sourced if it's owned by Amazon than if it was stuck with HP.
Amazon will make iPod Touch like devices before they make phones (although the Kindle Fire already falls into that market segment due its price point).
This proposed webOS purchase is to hedge their bets against Google keeping ICS and future versions closed source. Amazon can't out a 10" Kindle tablet with the underlying system based on Gingerbread. The Amazon services could be provided but there would be no apps and games made for it.
> Amazon can't out a 10" Kindle tablet with the underlying system based on Gingerbread.
Why not? What makes Gingerbread so inappropriate for a tablet compared to Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich? Amazon can tabletize Gingerbread in their fork.
Exactly. I don't get why Amazon would buy a new OS when it can get an existing well supported well publicized and we ll maintained OS for free. Currently they are freeloading on android which is a great thing to get all the android benefits without having to pay apenny for it. Why spend money on a new platform and then spend some more developing for it and inviting developers to it. I hope they don't make this mistake.
(1) Android is not free, ask Samsung about the $180 million check they're writing to Microsoft this year and the 20 court cases the have with Apple. There's potential liability with Oracle and if they put 3G/4G chips in them, Nokia. Then since Amazon is forking it they have their own development costs anyway.
(2) Amazon is locked out of Google Services and the latest version of Android, if ICS or Jellybean has a truly killer feature/service they could get their clock cleaned by other Android vendors. Hoping Google will always release the source early on releases yeah you might not want your eggs in that basket.
(3) Integrated development ala Apple can be the most profitable model. (or it can not, cough Palm)
(4) There's a lot of IP here and Amazon doesn't have a lot of patents.
(5) The tanking of everything WebOS may mean the price is very cheap. Maybe they implement a WebOS-like layer in Android.
(2) Amazon's market is different. They aren't competing with other "Android vendors." Yes it essentially runs Android, and by some peoples' definition, it's a tablet, but in the end what the Fire really is is a well-integrated portal to Amazon services and products. Nobody else can really offer that to consumers. Plus, it's highly unlikely that other vendors can afford to sell their hardware for $200.
Also, a lot of people seem to be assuming that Amazon is looking to upgrade the underlying version of Android. I think they are forgetting a key part here; Amazon is running a fork, and I think it's pretty likely that the only compatibility they care about is with Android Apps (and Bezos has said they will work hard to keep the Kindle Apps compatible with other Android platforms). The OS version doesn't matter at all, as long as the device is fast and pleasant to use, which by all accounts, it is here. There's really no reason they couldn't just keep working on their port indefinitely with no regard to what Google is doing with future iterations of Android. And if a new feature pops up that they like, nothing would stop them from cherry-picking it and putting it in to their fork.
What would Amazon do with WebOS when they have already invested so much in Android? Switching would require them to abandon the app store they built. The Silk browser seems at odds with how WebOS works. All their Android UI customizations would have to be rewritten.
My guess is a bunch of embedded Linux hackers and a large patent portfolio, which relative other vendors they're quite short on. Maybe webOS would be recycled as an OS for the ePaper products or something, but I wouldn't bet on its future even if it does go over to Amazon.
Even so it's a hard deal for me to get my head around. Amazon is not an acquisition-happy company. There's usually very clear alignment and they've never done a big talent acquisition, so I suspect there'd have to be something very specific that they're after.
What if their plan is to buy the right to ship software updates to the million TouchPad owners?
On the simple end, they could port Kindle, MP3, Prime Video, etc., and make them available as part of of a firmware update.
If they really want to, though, they could even make an "official" upgrade to Amazon's fork of Android, with the Appstore and UI that the Fire has (more precisely, the one from the 10" Fire variant they're working on).
So that gets them: (1) patents they need, (2) a bunch of in-house expertise in the full tablet hardware and software stack, (3) a bunch of customers to sell their content to and convert to their ecosystem.
That pretty much puts every asset Palm has to use except for WebOS itself, and as someone posted earlier, even that might be useful as a hedge against Google's handling of Android.
patents seem the big thing to me. If they are not cross licensing with microsoft/apple already they will probably get sued very soon, the Palm IP would be quite a big shield.
Look at it this way: their are about 1 million Touchpad users already out their due to the HP firesale. That's a nice market to buy, considering these people will want to upgrade to something in 12-18 months time, while keeping their profiles and all of the webOS software they bought (the app market in webOS land is thriving by the way since the massive influx of new users). I think whatever software work they would have to do to make this happen would be worth it to them.
Also remember they would be free of Google and Android, and all of the legal battles happening in that space right now. webOS is so far removed from any of the other platforms out there that there is no danger of being sued by someone for copying them.
Amazon has probably 10 times that many Kindle users or more already, and if HP sells Palm at a 90% discount that's still $120 per TouchPad user who may or may not ever upgrade to an Amazon Kindle. That would be a stupid way to acquire users.
Also, if you think WebOS is somehow immune to the plague of lawsuits in this industry you're crazy. Nobody is safe from lawsuits. It's just a cost of doing business these days; you pay your success tax and you move on.
> Amazon has probably 10 times that many Kindle users or more already
Kindle users may very well prove to be a different demographic than tablet users. If they sell 10 million Fires then they will probably be out-selling iPads in that space, can't see that happening. A lot of Kindle users will stick to Kindle because they just want to read books on an e-ink screen.
> Also, if you think WebOS is somehow immune to the plague of lawsuits in this industry you're crazy. Nobody is safe from lawsuits.
Do you have any idea how many mobile patents Palm has?
You realize most of Palm's pre-webOS patents weren't even owned by Palm by the time it was sold to HP, right? These guys (formerly Palmsource) own most of them: http://www.access-company.com/
All that's left are the webOS-centric patents for the most part, and patent applications such as the card metaphor (which would put QNX in a REALLY bad position if granted) are still pending.
Take a look at this from back in 2009 when Apple were raising the possibility of sueing Palm over the original Pre being too close to their iPhone (according to them):
Of course this never happened, because to quote Palm at the time:
"Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio, and we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves."
Note that this statement was written well after the spin-off of Palmsource.
It's not difficult to ascertain that ACCESS/Palmsource very likely granted unconditional use of the patents to the existing Palm that sold those very patents to them, therefore giving it basically unfettered rights to defend itself against Apple in this scenario.
I think -- although I am not sure -- that you have to own a patent in order to sue for infringement, which -- if true -- puts a big hole in your argument.
Now patents might be a good reason to buy Palm, but that's completely separate from the fate of WebOS. Amazon could take the patents and throw WebOS away.
I could see Amazon using the card metaphor as a custom multitasking Android launcher with full power of a pending patent application behind it while ditching the remainder of the OS. It's the one distinction webOS has had in UX and one that's generally garnered the most positive attention.
I could not, however, see Amazon hedging on Android by holding webOS in state. That would be a rather insane move given the audience the Kindle Fire will attract from Day One.
What about Dalvik and the on-going Oracle case? webOS has no Java, there is another distinction for you. It's the full stack in webOS that is unique, not just the UI.
That's partially true; webOS 3.0 has no Java as far as I'm aware, deferring to node.js for its services instead. webOS prior to that (e.g., Mojo era) contains an absolute trove of Java all over the damned place. I remember dissecting the media system looking for private APIs in parallel with developing a webOS application and many points led right back to Java-based services that assisted in doing a lot of perfunctory tasks.
In fact, I distinctly remember asking the Palm webOS developers when I discovered in their Java-based media services a particular call that instantly parsed SHOUTcast/Icecast-style playlists of many various formats with ease whether it'd become a public API call. It never did.
If HP races to finally reconcile the two sides as a promised a half-year ago a la Android's ICS, then there might be no obstacles to the Java argument. Until then, however...
> Amazon could take the patents and throw WebOS away.
...along with at least 1 million webOS users? Who are currently buying software from the webOS store, and are likely to buy future webOS hardware from Amazon (or whoever else how makes it)? Really?
There's no market for TouchPad software. Those customers just bought TouchPads because they were cheap, not because they want to use them regularly (like iPad and probably Kindle Fire). If TouchPad wasn't $99, they couldn't even sell 25,000 of them. They sold 1M by losing money and going out of business, not by creating an ecosystem which can 'trap' customers (and make them buy their future products just because their apps and music works only on that device) like what Apple and Amazon do.
Actually, I had just been waiting for the price to come down, but I am going to use my Touchpad for just about everything but development. I love WebOS, and I'm not saying there are many of us, but WebOS fans are pretty devoted. Kind of like Apple fanboys back in the day.
I don't buy that they are buying user profiles. The ability to run WebOS apps on the Kindle would be interesting, but buying such a small app market and spending the extra money to integrate it, I don't know if I buy that. And a complete move the WebOS? Abandoning the people who bought in to the Amazon App Store? No way. Moving to WebOS and making that able to run Android apps makes more sense, but I still don't see any incentive there. The Fire will be a huge success, and it looks like it works pretty good out of the box, and that should only improve with time. Why would they bother to start over with a move to WebOS?
It is a little premature to say that there is no danger of being sued as most of the litigation around Android surfaced recently (almost after it began to gain traction) and not back in 2008 when it first launched?
With all the bogus patents out there, it is hard to imagine any complex mobile system that doesn't infringe on _something_ out there.
Amazon has shown that they're open to pivots and trying new things before. I wouldn't be surprised if they made two different lines of Kindles, with different OS's. They are trying to achieve market dominance with the Amazon App Store—with WebOS they could truly achieve market dominance since they'd be the main source of apps.
But the Kindle Fire is supposed to be an appliance. It's supposed to Just Work. Adding a second tablet with a different OS would confuse Amazon's target audience.
there are two different kindle products - the e-ink kindle and the kindle fire. the e-ink kindle has a few different revisions with different input and connectivity methods, but in the end it is all the same functionality: the ability to read books, shop in the kindle store, and nothing else.
Apple does, but for devices that are clearly different. There is clear differentiation between the iOS app store and the OSX app store. There is also clear differentiation between the iPhone and iPad sections on the app store. The three forms are physically different enough to draw a cognitive line in the sand. I doubt many people who own an iPhone think it's an iPad or own an iPad and think its a Mac.
If Amazon ultimately uses WebOS to get into the phone market, I could see them easily managing two different app stores easily. If they create one set of Android tablets and one set of WebOS tablets, it's going to be a bit trickier. All of this is really going to depend on how apps fair on the new Amazon tablet.
And misses the relevance of the app store for Amazon, who sell slates to sell book content.
It also ignores the most common approach to app stores.
The OS determines which app store one can visit.
I.e. even my mom can't download Macapps to her iPhone.
[Edit]Your argument also assumes that Amazon will not differentiate the tablets which seems contrary to their differentiation between the Fire and Kindle (e.g. touch screen operation means different sorts of apps).
> And misses the relevance of the app store for Amazon, who sell slates to sell book content.
I'm not sure I understand this. There is no issues with selling book content on any flavor of Amazon device, it's all the stuff. The issue is with Apps and having two or three tablet devices, all running different OS's with different app stores.
> The OS determines which app store one can visit.
Sort of. I have both an iPad and iPhone, but rarely use the AppStore built-in to either one, unless I know exactly what app I want to buy. I prefer discovery using iTunes. I'm sure some % of Amazon uses do something similar with the www.amazon.com app store front, though not having an Android device, I'm not entirely familiar with the options available and how they compare to Apple's AppStore.
> I.e. even my mom can't download Macapps to her iPhone.
She can't download them, but she could mistakenly purchase them. I think the separation is clear enough to avoid mistakes between Apple devices. I'm simply arguing that the potential is worse for Amazon should they roll out both Android and WebOS tablets. Again, the issue would only stem from an off-device app store, since an on-device store can obviously filter.
> Your argument also assumes that Amazon will not differentiate the tablets which seems contrary to their differentiation between the Fire and Kindle
The argument is not whether or not they will differentiate, but rather to what extent they will be differentiated. The differences between Fire and Kindle are obvious. The difference between Fire and (WebOS Tablet) is more of the question.
> She can't download them, but she could mistakenly purchase them. I think the separation is clear enough to avoid mistakes between Apple devices. I'm simply arguing that the potential is worse for Amazon should they roll out both Android and WebOS tablets. Again, the issue would only stem from an off-device app store, since an on-device store can obviously filter.
I don't think they'll have 2 OSes but I don't think this is true. Buying an app requires an Amazon account, so they could obviously stop people from buying apps that are not compatible with their device.
Probably if they buy WebOS it will be for the Kindle Fire 2 which won't be for another year, at which point they can transition (slowly) away from Android. Buying WebOS on the cheap might be too good of an idea to pass up on.
What would Amazon do with WebOS when they have already invested so much in Android?
Google can pull the rug out from under them at any time for any reason. You can't run a multi-billion dollar business on good faith alone. It would be nice to believe that Google wouldn't do that type of thing, and maybe they won't, but it's a huge risk to take. Amazon is playing to win this. They have to believe at some point the Fire and other Amazon tablets will be so successful that they can easily attract developers. (and we can't rule out some form of Android compatibility being added to WebOS -- something Palm may have already been working on and could be quite mature. If RIM managed it I'm pretty sure Palm can too)
What can Google do to Amazon? The only real ownership Google has over Android is in the market that Amazon's not using, and in the development of new versions which Amazon can easily ignore by forking for good (and that would probably hurt Google more than Amazon, by fragmenting the platform).
I first misread that as "Amazon in talks to buy HP" and what's funny is that it didn't shock me. On the other hand if they only got Palm that would be great for IP.
We saw the launch of the Kindle Fire and have seen Amazon's hand with the custom build of Android that looks/feels nothing like Android... anyone have any guesses why they would want WebOS?
Amazon already has the Android store, all the Android integration done for the Fire and the Java/Android expertise in house... where does WebOS fit in?
a) HP's probably offering it for pennies. Too good of a deal for any tablet/mobile player.
b) Amazon Silk is a game changer that probably has Google fuming. Buying Palm is probably a hedge bet in case Google clamps down. The end-user platform(devise, OS, browser) war between Google, Apple, and MS is to control the user data. Amazon wants to make sure it has an unrestricted piece of that data.
Opera Mini has been doing the remote-rendering thing for years and years now. It is the most widely used mobile browser, with 113+ million users and 2+ billion daily pageviews.
Use appears to be mostly from Asia. In Europe, iPhone leads by a wide margin, followed by Android; in North America, Android leads, followed by iPhone [2]. Opera makes at best a fourth place showing on these continents.
To your point about "fuming", I think you're right. There's no evidence that Google's analytics or search (advertising) products will be negatively impacted by silk.
I can narrow down Asia to Post Soviet asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan etc. Internet is normally overpriced in these countries and opera mini has nice compression features and dedicated "turn off images" button, which is very handy. And not everyone here can afford high end iOS/android devices, so for Symbian, Opera mini is the best choice.
Amazon is just about to start encouraging people to buy Android applications for the Amazon App Store that presumably wouldn't work on a webOS tablet. If Amazon are in the running, it can only be for the patent portfolio.
If Google were to clamp down on Android, why wouldn't Amazon just continue developing their Android fork? Seems like it would be a lot more effort to get webOS to where they need it to be.
Interesting take on it being a preemptive move. I wouldn't have seen that kind of competitive advantage in owning Palm... again, since it doesn't look to be a talent acquisitions and it isn't for patents (?) then the only thing left is WebOS, in which case what do these guys want with a incompatible clean-room OS?
Google already has too many mobile OS's and Amazon's expertise is elsewhere.
I feel like I'm missing some core component of Palm here that makes it valuable to even still be talked about. Had they had some amazing version of Android with a custom browser and all that, I'd understand this a lot more quickly.
Does it have to be the webOS division? I'd imagine Amazon wouldn't have that much interest in Palm's software, but Palm is also one of the few entities in North America that has experience designing hardware from end to end.
We know that Amazon had to outsource the design and build of the Fire to an outsider, no doubt it would be preferable to bring that in-house to a team of world class industrial designers.
The only way I can see this making sense is if Amazon could buy the supply chain relationships that HP must have built for their tablets. Probably HP have options/exclusivity deals on display and chip production for the coming years.
Off-topic, but is there a reason you say 'HP have' instead of 'HP has'? I was talking to a few British guys at work about this and they thought it sounded odd as well.
This is one of those US/UK differences. In the US, we usually refer to companies or groups (like sports teams) as singular. In the UK, companies have been historically referred to as plural. Since the parent uses the British spelling 'favour', but feels the singular form is correct, I wonder if that's changing.
To me the detail that doesn't ring true is that HP would sell Palm at a substantial loss. Last I heard, people thought HP could at least recoup the purchase price (or more) based on the "value" of Palm's patents alone. I suppose HP could be selling Palm with only patent licenses (instead of the patents themselves), but that seems like a strange thing to do on both sides.
If HP were being clever, I could see them leaking their discussions with Amazon right now (when Amazon is on everyone's mind) as a way to motivate the "real" buyer (presumably Google or Apple). But I don't give HP credit for being that clever.
Even if this is true and it does happen, I would think Palm as a brand is dead. Even if the Fire 2 ends up having webOS, Amazon would never market it that way. Just as how Android is behind the scenes on the current Fire, they would do the same with webOS.
With Fire, Amazon essentially has an independent OS. The only reason to by Palm would be that Google will not protect you as an Android maker and you need your own patent portfolio to defend yourself.
No, they didn't. The biggest sign you can see out in the open is that the Fire is running a fork of 2.3 Gingerbread instead of 3.0 Honeycomb or the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich.
They actually forked earlier than that. Everything I've read has said the forked 2.1, which means Amazon has been developing the Fire for some time now, with impressive secrecy to boot.
Could this have anything to do with the licensing fees that are becoming a reality with the Android ecosystem? It might be an incentive to bring things in house in the future (both hardware and software).
Be went with PalmSource back when Palm was split into PalmOne and PalmSource. PalmOne then re-became Palm and was acquired by HP, but PalmSource was picked up by ACCESS.
> I hope that whomever HP sells Palm off to will bring back the brand.
I think the Palm brand is "too far gone" in the public mindset to be worth bringing back. The Amazon brand is a far stronger, far more popular brand and its important that they don't dilute that right as they launch the Fire.
Acquiring Palm, to me, would be so they can acquire patents, some developers and designers, and some tech. WebOS, nice as it is, has missed the train. Amazon would be insane to backflip now (even I wish they'd used WebOS to begin with).
Jeff Bezzos, on the other hand, is a true visionary in my opinion and I would be happy to see my webOS HP Profile become an Amazon profile sometime soon.
My only doubt though: will they make phones?