WebOS refuses to die. The former Palm operating system, acquired by Hewlett-Packard and then sidelined into an open source project, will now be the focus of an internal start-up called Gram.
According to an internal email, HP is recruiting staff to run the unit as an independent subsidiary, apparently to discover whether there is still a place for the firm in the mobile device market, which it exited when CEO Meg Whitman took the helm and dropped the firm’s smartphones.
Gram will include webOS, plus related software platform products such as the Enyo development tools, and products for delivering cloud content. This suggests some revival of the webOS strategy briefly pursued by Whitman’s predecessor Leo Apotheker, who wanted to embed the Linux-based software in every web-connected gadget and claim a role in the internet of things, rather than seeking to go head-to-head with Apple and Google in handsets.
‘We are no longer a consumer hardware brand, we are a different company with a focus on software, user experience, cloud, engineering and partnering,’ wrote SVP Martin Risau in the email, obtained by Bloomberg.
Not that HP is putting itself on the line for this experiment, which it stressed will run in stealth mode ‘to give it time to grow’ (or allow it to die quietly should it not deliver results). WebOS is now available to third parties under an open source licence which requires users to contribute their changes back to the platform, so Gram may prove to be a coordinating center for those innovations.
HP added: “Gram is a new company leveraging the core strengths of webOS, Enyo, and our cloud offerings as well as the firepower of our partners to create a technology that will unleash the freedom of the web.”
Another Linux-based operating system, Nokia’s MeeGo, which was also banished to the backwaters of its vendor’s open source program, has re-emerged recently too. MeeGo was a shortlived collaboration between Nokia and Intel, and the latter’s work lives on in the open source project Tizen, which is halfheartedly backed by Samsung, but may gain a role as a non-handset OS for the Korean giant in future. Nokia’s MeeGo efforts fell under the recent axe of software and OS activities at the firm, but former employees have taken various aspects into new start-ups, most notably Jolla.
Jolla says its new MeeGo user interface is already complete, only weeks after it announced its formation, and it is targeting low end smartphone partners in China, as well as a role in new embedded devices as those evolve. Like RIM with BB10 (see separate item) and HP, Jolla believes a niche OS can survive in the short term by tapping the growth in emerging economies where there is less entrenched user and developer loyalty to Android and iOS, and where there is a gap left by Symbian and Java; and longer term by addressing ‘internet of things’ devices such as in-car systems.
Jolla’s CEO Jussi Hurmola is embarking on a ‘world tour’ to sign partners and supporters, and to reassemble pieces of code created for the original MeeGo by media houses, operators and developers worldwide. “They have their MeeGo stuff and now we are basically going around the globe and collecting all this stuff back together,’ he told NorseCode. That will reduce some of the work of creating the necessary app store and cloud services.
He is also hiring engineers in Finland, targeting 100 staff in the country by year end, when the full reworked OS fork should launch. “We’re having a recruiting day today and we’re hiring lots of engineers from Finland and we’re also looking to hire people from China, so we are opening our Chinese office soon,” Hurmola told Norse Code. He is also talking to contributors to the Linux-based Mer Project, the core OS of the MeeGo fork Jolla has chosen. He added: “Our UI is ready now, we haven’t released it yet, we will save it for the product launch and the platform is getting up now so the project looks pretty nice.” He insisted it will be very different from the UIs on Android, iOS or even Nokia’s only MeeGo device, the N9.
Jolla has already signed a deal with large Chinese retailer D Phone and is also wooing operators for carrier branded devices. ‘I feel that there’s a pressure in Chinese industry itself to create something inside China, and we believe that MeeGo can deliver those things,” Hurmola says. “I think China will be the next source of change. That’s why we want to be there and we want to be part of this change.”