14 DAY TRIAL // HP's treatment of webOS is a matter of much debate, controversy even, and it looks like some new light has been shed upon the matter by one Phil McKinney.
Some people may recognize the name as belonging to the former HP CTO (chief technology officer), who retired back in October, 2011.
When HP decided to scrap webOS, HP had only owned Palm for sixteen months.
One would think this is enough time to figure out what to do with an IT portfolio, but HP had intended to develop the operating system, and products equipped with it, for at least three years.
Granted, that isn't completely accurate: HP wasn't going to do much. Instead, it meant to go with a hands-off approach, meaning that Palm was just going to develop products and technologies with funds from its new parent company.
The program was supposed to let Palm become a leading presence in the mobile space, but ended up being cut short by Leo Apotheker, and whoever else was part of the company leadership at the time.
"Palm had been struggling and HP was stepping in, doing the acquisition, and we were basically going to take three years hands-off. Palm was basically going to get a cash infusion, resources, and expertise. But Palm was going to be given three years to basically get itself positioned to be a market leader in its space,” McKinney said during an interview with Rick Mathieson, for the promotion of his new book.
“Now, fast forward to July of 2011 and, one, you had a swap out of the CEOs — Leo comes in as the new CEO — and HP, for whatever reason — I was not a part of this decision — made the decision to kill it one year into the three year program. This is an example of not committing long term to the resources and not having patience for innovation, and I'm disappointed that HP made that decision."
All things considered, it is no wonder that Meg Whitman, who was chosen to replace Apotheker, couldn't salvage the situation and decided to make the software open source.