A report by AppleInsider.com suggests that Hewlett-Packard could reveal its plans for webOS as early as sometime this week. An initial bidding process is now complete, suggesting that HP may have found a buyer for the beleaguered group. Rumoured interested parties include Amazon, Facebook, and HTC.
A company-wide (or only Palm-unit-wide?) meeting is apparently scheduled to take place today at which HP will make an announcement on the future of webOS. Citing “people familiar with the company’s plans,” these could include the outright sale of the division or a spin-off (as part of a bigger PSG unit spin-off?). It’s not clear if HP also looked further into licensing agreements and no mention of such a deal is made in the report.
HP bought Palm for US$1.2 billion last year. It launched the Veer and Pre 3 smartphones and the TouchPad tablet this year but halted sales abruptly only weeks after the launch and announced that it was getting out of the webOS hardware business. The future of webOS has been uncertain since then.