WebOS to Run on Every HP PC by 2012, Says CEO Leo Apotheker

Without a doubt, HP's new CEO, Leo Apotheker, is trying his best in order to return the company to its path to success, and, apparently, one tool that will be extremely important for achieving this goal will be none other than WebOS, the operating system they've got a hold of via the Palm acquisition.

So, according to a report by Slashgear, quoting an interview by Mr. Apotheker with BusinessWeek, it seems that the new HP CEO is keen on turning the company around and pushing it in a whole new direction, but before it will do that, some “soul searching” will apparently be required, the company's top honcho actually claiming that “HP has lost its soul”.

However, in order to attain this goal, the company requires a major engine, that will draw creative energies around it, and that “engine” will apparently be none other than the aforementioned operating system for mobile devices, WebOS.

So, it seems that, by 2012, every HP PC shipped “will include the ability to run webOS in addition to Windows”, although no specific details have been provided regarding this high level of integration between WebOS and the operating system from Microsoft.

Nevertheless, it seems that we're not talking about WebOS becoming some sort of fast-booting InstantOS for the HP machines, but rather it delivering a much deeper level of integration (perhaps a dedicated application running in Windows, or a virtual machine of sorts?).

It seems that, beside making WebOS one of the company's key strategic initiatives, HP's new CEO has also decided to backtrack on some of his predecessor's decisions, and for this reason, it will allocate a much more serious budget for research and development activities, while in the same time attempting to actually bring down the barriers between various divisions, in order to boost the company's level of creativity.