Every PC
shipped by Hewlett-Packard, beginning in 2012, will include the ability to run
webOS, the mobile operating system HP acquired last year in its $1.2 billion
acquisition of Palm. However, HP is not abandoning Microsoft just yet. The
company still plans to offer Microsoft’s Windows operating system as well as
productivity tools such as Office.
This is just
one of the changes being put into place by the PC maker’s new CEO, Leo
Apotheker, according to a March 9 report in Bloomberg Business
Week.
Under former
HP CEO Mark Hurd — who resigned in August 2010 after being found in
violation of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct, following an allegedly
inappropriate relationship with an HP contractor — cost-cutting was a priority,
more than research and development or software growth. By including webOS on
its PCs, Apotheker hopes to “create a massive platform,” he told
Bloomberg, and so attract application developers to the OS — a necessity, if HP
is going to effectively compete against the Apple iPhone and Android-running
handsets in the smartphone market HP entered with its purchase of Palm.
While the
Apple App Store currently features more than 350,000 applications, and Google’s
Android Market has swelled to 250,000, webOS’s application offerings number
approximately 6,000.
Other planned
changes include a renewed emphasis on product quality — which not only keeps
customers happy but lowers service and warranty costs for a company, Apotheker
told Bloomberg — as well as creating new channels of communication between
product groups and growing HP’s software holdings.
For more, read the eWEEK article: HP’s webOS Running on All PCs by 2012: Report.
