So HP just bought Palm. That came out of nowhere.
I'm with most of the world out there when I thought that HTC was for sure the frontrunner, if anyone. But, that came with the very serious possibility that it would mean an end to webOS, it would merely be an IP purchase. Being a webOS developer/user/fanatic this was a pretty depressing revelation. But a couple weeks passed and HTC apparently walked away. "Whew" I thought, assuming Palm would now try to stick it out. This came with yet another troubling thought that Palm is bleeding away to death right now. They have a fantastic phone, fantastic platform, they just can't sell a phone no one has heard of! And without money, they weren't going to fix that problem.
Enter HP. HP really makes so much sense in hindsight. A company who once was a trailblazer with a mobile form factor (iPaq anyone?), now not even a second thought from most consumers. And in the dust of the latest Dell phone leaks, HP, being far larger and more dominant, had a gaping hole of a product line to fill. It really was a perfect match: Palm, who had a fantastic product line but no money to support it, and HP, who had no mobile product line and too much money to know what to do with it!
Now you have to step back and take a glimpse at the bigger picture. Although Palm is first and foremost a smartphone company, webOS was built from the ground up to be able to run on any device and any form factor. Did you just think that too? That unusually mysterious Windows 7 table, the HP Slate? With webOS? Amazing! Granted, the HP Slate is already very far along in its development so it's unlikely that they will jump ship from Windows 7 for now, but the framework is there from a hardware standpoint. There is a very interesting opportunity here to make the iPad look l<more like> a children's toy.
HP will reportedly "double down" on investing into webOS. Porting it to many form factors to suit its diverse hardware portfolio. At the same time though, HP and Palm have done an incredible thing for people like me: developers. All of a sudden I see this budding platform which has yet to become saturated with apps (like the iPhone or Android variants) with several form factors and possibilities. Double that with the fact that with the PDK, porting apps is now easier than ever. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a massive influx of apps over the next few months.
One thing you can be sure of is that I will be making some new apps, this time they will go to the app catalog instead of the homebrew gallery.
So with the swift purchase of Palm, the game has changed. There is now a newly confirmed big player in the game. It will be interesting to look back a couple years from now to see how much HTC, Lenovo or RIM missed out by not capitalizing on this brilliant opportunity.