LG’s intentions to purchase WebOS from HP to power a new line of smart TVs surprisingly stole the day at the 2013 Mobile World Congress opener on Monday.
Most of the tech blogging world was focused on the Nokia Lumia 720 or new line of feature phones earlier in the morning, when word broke out of LG, not pimping a new Optimus phone but purchasing the Web-based operating system started by Palm that HP purchased for $1.2 billion.
Palm originally designed the system as a follow-up to its prophetic line of Palm PDAs. WebOS was renowned for its ability to render websites and their accompanying JavaScript: something today’s smartphones still occasionally struggle with.
Palm was purchased as a whole by HP in 2010, and WebOS was set aside for future use. This use came about in a very brief and underperforming line of HP products in 2011, but since moved on to Android for the newer tablets.
Until this morning, the consensus seemed to be that this was the end for the system. Halfway through 2012, according to its Wikipedia page, its market share had fallen to .6 percent.
DigitalTrends.com contacted John I. Taylor, vice president of public affairs and communications at LG, who said that LG, basically, wanted the employees and software engineers that were included in the deal.
“[There's a] tremendous amount of talent in the WebOS organization,” he says. “LG has made offers for them to become employees of LG Electronics to develop software for LG Smart TV.”
The site notes that LG may be looking to base its Smart TV technologies in the cloud, so it can sell less intensive or expensive televisions to beam the content down to.
The CNET article that broke the news ran into some criticism, apparently, as the writers were meant to be under an “embargo” as a competing reporter allegedly said.
After feeling the pressure of having spoken out of turn, CNET pulled the story, but it was too late. The Internet had seen everything.
