HP’s plans for webOS are much larger than many (me included) had anticipated. Speaking the D9 Conference, HP CEO Leo Apotheker reaffirmed plans to put have webOS powered printers and even on desktops as a Windows overlay (at least initially). But the company’s plans don’t stop there. Apotheker said: “It’s not correct to believe that it should only be on HP devices. There are all kinds of other people who want to make whatever kind of hardware they make and would like to connect them to the Internet. We’ll make it available to enterprises and to SMBs. It will run on lots of HP devices.” Then asked whether it would consider licensing webOS to a company such as HTC, Apotheker replied, “It is certainly something we would entertain.”
Jon Rubinstein, former Palm CEO and current HP executive, speaking at Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference, added that HP was open to the idea but only with select partners.