When Hewlett Packard's CEO Meg Whitman informed journalists and analyst on Friday that the company's WebOS operating system would be made open source, Tech Crunch decided to delve a little deeper into the company's plans for its mobile software platform. Sitting down with Whitman and HP board member Marc Andreessen, Tech Crunch was told that while HP is getting out of the mobile phone business, there is a chance it will produce a tablet running WebOS within the next two years.
Meg Whitman went on to say that the world's largest computer maker will make a tablet in 2012, though it will be running Windows 8, saying: "We’ll continue to invest in the existing tablet ecosystem” and that the company “will bet heavily with Windows."
In July HP released its TouchPad tablet running WebOS. Less than seven weeks later, HP decided to pull the plug due to mixed reviews and poor sales. The TouchPad experienced a second-life when HP tried to unload its inventory by selling the tablets for a well below its original MSRP. The 16 GB version could be had for as little as $100. By October, HP had sold 204,000 TouchPads.
[via Tech Crunch]
