After the pretty huge news this Friday that HP will be giving their webOS operating system out to the open source community.

Memo from Meg Whitman CEO of HP to employees on Friday:

Today, we announced that HP will contribute our webOS software to the open source community and support its development going forward. We believe that this is the best way to ensure the benefits of webOS are accessible to the largest possible ecosystem.

It appears that HP will however be returning to mobile device manufacturing, and eventually these will also be based on webOS.

The proof comes from an interview with Meg Whitman on the Verge and seems to show that HP plan to create further webOS based mobile devices in the near and distant future.

Contained within the interview are some clear statements suggesting that HP will return to device manufacture at some point in the future, though the initial return to mobile device manufacturing looks set to be with a tablet running on Windows 8 O/S for now.

HP will build a Windows based tablet for 2012:

Yes HP are planning to build a windows base tablet for release in 2012.

Whitman is quoted saying:

“We’ll continue to invest in the existing tablet ecosystem” and in the near term “will bet heavily with Windows.”

HP will make webOS mobile devices in the future

Asked if they will create new webOS devices also, Meg Whitman HP CEO states:

“The answer to that is yes but what I can’t tell you is whether that will be in 2012 or not,”

Offering no clear dates or times it would however appear that there is a desire or capability to return to device manufacture, something which looked unclear only recently, but it looks likely to be later rather than sooner.

Whitman went on to say:

“…we will use webOS in new hardware, but it’s just going to take us a little longer to reorganize the team in a quite different direction than we’ve been taking it in the past.”

Hewlett Packard more interested in Tablets for now:

According to dialogue on Techcruch, a new HP webOS based tablet device could appear as soon as 2013.

It is looking like HP will be sticking with the more PC related side of the business that they are known for, as opposed to smartphones, which they perhaps do not have the best reputation for or presence in peoples minds and thoughts when thinking about HP in general.

It would appear that HP are starting to get some drive, focus and commitment back within their ranks after a really tough 2011. And it also seems that Meg Whitman is the right person for the job after all.

Like a Phoenix from the flames, the fate of Hewlett Packard’s WebOS seems to have finally been sealed, and thanks to HP it will be an open source operating system rather than simply killing the O/S dead.

Many thought that HP would simply ditch the operating system, so this altruistic gesture comes as somewhat of a surprise, in a good way, to many tech observers and commentators.

In an interview on the Verge with Meg Whitman and Marc Andreessen they discuss the long term plans for WebOS though make no clear indication about job losses, but do mention that they intend to make the whole O/S open source, with Enyo included, which was free to developers anyway.

Do HP have a medium term 3/4 year plan for WebOS?

Meg Whitman is quoted here saying:

“Well first I want to set expectations about time frame. This is going to take some time. If you look back at the history of Mozilla or Red Hat — these things did not become giant platforms over night. This in my view is a 4 or 5 year timeframe, and I want to make sure we really communicate that.”

So we can see that it looks very likely that they will be putting some effort into this O/S, and with 600 people employed globally in HP’s WebOS division, these people will be hoping that they do not abandon it as was feared since the earlier notification that HP were ceasing production of their tablet and smartphones back in August.

WebOS’s future in the hands of developers and device manufacturers:

With HP now moving further into the software market, and ditching device manufacturing for now, the move to make the highly praised WebOS software open source will put the operating system in quite an interesting position, essentially sitting alongside Android, with hopes that it will be improved and added to over time.

WebOS was built for mobile:

Praising the WebOS software HP CEO Meg Whitman states:

“WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

And HP have have stated that they will personally work on the operating system and be an active partner in its development. They also claim that they will offer:

“good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation,”

Avoiding O/S fragmentation (which the Android O/S suffers from), is a desirable future for the well liked WebOS software.

The idea is that there will not be lots of different names and versions floating around every year, so the software stays capable and robust on all devices.

Indeed many software developers claim that WebOS is one hell of a platform so this could be a really interesting new beginning for the O/S.

We will keep you posted on further news on HP and WebOS as always.

The credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded HP’s (Hewlett-Packard’s) overall credit rating last week.

The main reasons cited were a high turnover rate, an unclear strategy moving forward and poor overall policies.

We have already touched on HP’s misfortunes in an earlier article this week, as they promise to make a statement over the sale or non sale of the stricken mobile operating system “webOS” which they bought from Palm for $1.2 billion back in April 2010, and subsequently in August 2011 HP decided to ditch the mobile O/S and proceed to back out of manufacturing phones and PC’s to concentrate on software, so you can understand S&P’s current decision, however, the move only goes to compound HP’s problems further and here is why:

HP needs direction:

The downgrade means that HP’s long term debt rating for local and foreign debt is set at BBB+, a minor but considerable shift from the earlier figure of A. This will now make it more expensive and tougher for HP to borrow cash on the markets.

S&P also slashed their short-term rating to A-2 from A-1. S&P analyst Martha Toll Reed said in a statement:

”We have concerns that HP’s inconsistent growth strategies and high levels of board of director and senior management turnover have elevated the level of operational and execution risk in the near term,”

S&P also took into account the firms questionable takeover of “Autonomy” and said that this had reduced the companies overall liquidity and financial flexibility, and was a contributing factor to the downgrade.

Hewlett Packard has confirmed plans to stop making PCs, tablets and phones in order to refocus on the more profitable software side of their business much like their cousin IBM who bailed out of manufacturing to also follow pretty much the same path.

Sign that traditional PC’s are doomed?

It is a bizarre twist if you think about it, here you have Google going into manufacturing, a wholly software and service based entity, buying patents and potentially looking at manufacturing as a result, you also have Microsoft edging their bets on a new operating system that will be able to work cross platform but is primarily a mobile O/S at its root. Nokia are also stopping the sale of their new N9 in many countries that you would expect them to be on sale in including the US and the UK. And Apple have just become the biggest company in the world proving that software and hardware are where the serious money is.

Mobile devices are catalyst to changes:

The one constant in all the major news we are hearing in the technology industry currently is it all relates to mobile phones and mobile devices. “to make or not to make” seems to be the in question many brands are asking themselves. This leads me to believe that the traditional PC is dying quicker than many thought and the big boys are cutting their losses now and going into a seemingly safer market to focus their core business as competition in hardware is simply too fierce, plus I suspect the World economy has slowed sales down quite drastically…(I will not be buying a new computer for three years minimum I suspect, but I would like a tablet)….see the pattern.

HP has said that it is considering the sale of its personal systems group, this includes the worlds’ largest personal computer making business, and has also state that it will discontinue its webOS devices used in its current smartphones and tablets which the take over of Palm computers helped to create.

HP buy Autonomy – UK based software company – Shareholders to smile wide!

Hewlett Packard have also offered to buy the UK software company Autonomy leaving Autonomy shareholders looking potentially very happy with an over valuation offer of 64% of close of sale share prices of £15.58 on the 17/08/11, equating to a £25.50 cash bonus per share to Autonomy shareholders, this looks like a very lucrative deal indeed.

Only in March HP stated that WebOS would be key for future devices:

The above announcements are industry shaking shifts from the earlier statements made in a strategic review back in March that webOS would be integrated into all its future hardware manufacturing.

Software more profitable:

With the failure of the $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm and the subsequent decision to ditch the Pre smartphone and TouchPad which used HP’s/Palm’s WebOS to compete with Apple iOS and now Android, the decision by CEO Leo Apotheker to get out of hardware altogether seems like a serious shift but many would say since Leo came in from Germany’s HP rival SAP, he has been steering this refocus to software more aggressively as time goes by.

HP had launched its Pre smartphone as a competitor to the iPhone and devices based on Google’s Android operating system, the trouble was that the market and technology journalists did not take to the devices in anywhere near the kind of uptake that HP hoped for.

Chief executive of YCMNET Advisors, Michael Yoshikami

“HP is recognising what the world has recognised, which is hardware in terms of consumers is not a huge growth business anymore,”

“It’s not where the money is. It’s in keeping with the new CEO’s perspective that they want to be more in services and more business-oriented.”

Though you only need to take a look at Apple who have completely flown in the face of the old Microsoft lovers adage who said, “the money is on software, not hardware” back in the Early 2000’s…is HP right in doing this?…possibly so considering their current hardware failures and the competition in general.

Will Autonomy keep autonomy?

There is a certain amount of sadness in Cambridge, UK as Autonomy was a flagship company that looks like it will get eaten up by HP and while it has been promised that it will be run as a separate company, with Mike Lnych still in charge. Time will tell what this means to the local area where Autonomy grew from.

While there is a promise that Autonomy will be run as a separate business, with Mike Lynch still in charge, this still looks like a sad day for British technology – and for Cambridge in particular.

Break up of HP to interest private equity firms

HP have said that it “will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation… from HP through a spin-off or other transaction”.

And should this happen many private equity firms are likely to be very keen to buy up parts of the old Hewlett Packard, to repackage them into other forms.

So we see the rebirth of an old brand….sound familiar?