About a year and a half ago Hewlett Packard bought Palm for $1.2 billion. The company had big plans for the webOS operating system, and planned to launch phones, tablets, and other products… even printers. Today those plans are largely coming to an end. HP has announced it will discontinue webOS devices including phones and tablets.

The company is still looking for ways to get value from the operating system. That could mean we’ll still see those webOS printers, or perhaps webOS apps that can run on Windows computers. But it’s more likely that HP is hoping to license the operating system to other phone or tablet makers. I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen though.

WebOS has always been an interesting platform. Palm and HP had some of the best multitasking and notification systems of any platform. But while Palm was once the leader in the PDA/smartphone space, the company never managed to gain much mindshare after the launch of the Apple iPhone.

While there are hundreds of thousands of third party apps for iOS and Android, and hundreds of millions of people using Android or iOS devices, the numbers for webOS have always been much smaller.

HP recently launched its first webOS tablet, the HP TouchPad. And while it’s one of the few competitors to Apple’s iPad that doesn’t use the Google Android operating system, it hasn’t been selling well and HP has marked down the price several times since the tablet first went on sale at the start of July.

It’s possible that today’s news isn’t a fatal blow to the webOS platform… but at the very least HP’s announcement that it’s discontinuing operations for webOS hardware puts the software ecosystem on life support.

App store GetJar has announced that it’s garnered over 2 billion total downloads. GetJar sports a large catalog of free applications for pretty much every smartphone platform except iOS, including BlackBerry, webOS, Android, Symbian, and even HTML5 web apps.

GetJar offers more than 150,000 apps in total, and the company has managed to score a few Android exclusives. The company’s app store was the first to offer Angry Birds or Cut the Rope before they were offered in the Android Market and other stores — although that hasn’t always worked out well. GetJar couldn’t handle all the traffic from the Angry Birds launch and developers Rovio made a version of the game available in the Android Market the same day.

Facebook is GetJar’s top app, with over 100 million downloads reported.

To put GetJar’s success in the context of the major application incorporated offerings, Apple’s App Store surpassed 15 billion downloads in late June. The Android Market topped 4.5 billion earlier this month. For a small, totally free, alternative application store, GetJar has been reasonably successful. The company credits its growth to its “open approach to the app marketplace” and giving developers for all platforms “a free space to distribute their applications.”

via IntoMobile

One of the biggest complaints early reviewers have had about the HP TouchPad tablet is the lack of high quality apps available for webOS 3.0. In fact, some of the apps HP had promised would be available at launch didn’t make the cut when the tablet started shipping earlier this month. Take the Amazon Kindle app for the TouchPad, for instance.

The TouchPad hit the streets on July 1st. Nearly three weeks later, Amazon released a beta version of its Kindle app for the tablet last night.

You can find the new app in the webOS App Catalog, but there’s no mention of it on Amazon’s web site yet. The eBook app is also geographically restricted right now — you can only download it if you’re in the United States.

The folks at PreCentral have put together a detailed hands-on review. In a nutshell, there are a few bugs that have to be worked out (for instance, many users are seeing multiple copies of the same book), but overall the app provides a good experience for reading eBooks. You can also search books, take notes, or highlight passages.

If you’ve already used the Amazon Kindle app on another platform, any books you’ve already purchased will be available to download and sync with the TouchPad.

While an Amazon Kindle app doesn’t really set the TouchPad apart from the competition (there are similar apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry), it does help the new tablet compete.

HP has launched a public beta of HP Play — a new application designed to let you synchronize your media between a PC or Mac and an HP TouchPad tablet or webOS phone.

The software is based on the open source Songbird media player and right now it only lets you sync your music over a USB cable. But eventually HP plans to add wireless sync capabilities so that you can manage media on your mobile device without physically plugging it into your computer every time you want to make a change.

You can use HP Play to import music from iTunes playlists or from other directories on your computer. You can also create playlists or rip your own CDs.

via PreCentral

Popular blogging service WordPress has been offering mobile apps for writing posts, editing comments, and generally managing your blog for a few years. But the company’s iOS and Android apps have never been as easy to use as the web-based WordPress admin panel. Among other things, the mobile apps lack a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor for simple things like italicizing text, creating bullet points, or uploading images. Today WordPress finally launched a mobile app which looks like the web-based editor.

The only catch? It’s for webOS. Now don’t get me wrong, webOS is an excellent mobile operating system with great support for multitasking. With the HP TouchPad which hits the streets today, it’s a good time for WordPress to launch the new mobile app which appears to be designed with the tablet in mind.

But webOS also happens to be a platform that a relatively small number of people actually use right now. It’s a bit surprising that WordPress didn’t focus its efforts on developing a full visual editor for more popular platforms such as iOS or Android first. Update: Although as David Frahm points out, a key difference between iOS, Android, and webOS is that HP’s mobile platform is based on web standards — something the folks at WordPress already know a lot about.

In addition to the visual editor, the WordPress app for webOS supports a Sliding Panel view which allows you to flip between different views. The app allows you to manage posts and comments and view your blog’s traffic stats. You can also receive notifications when new messages arrive.  Read the rest of this entry »

HP contends that one of the strengths of the webOS platform is that the company controls both the hardware and the software, allowing HP to tightly control the user experience of the TouchPad tablet and webOS phones, much the way Apple does with its iOS devices. But that doesn’t mean HP isn’t willing to license the operating system to other companies that want to use it.

Earlier this month the company’s CEO confirmed that HP might be open to licensing the OS, and today Bloomberg reports that HP is already “talking to a number of companies.” One of those companies may be Samsung, which has launched a number of smartphones and tablets running Google Android in recent years.

This Is My Next reports that HP isn’t necessarily going to license the software to every company that asks. Instead, HP is apparently looking for phone makers that are looking to prioritize webOS over other platforms, possibly even helping to develop the software further.

On the one hand, if Samsung, HTC, or another device maker launches a webOS handset, it would mean that HP wouldn’t have quite as much control over the user experience. On the other hand, the more phones that are running the software, the more attractive the platform may become for users and for third party developers.

HP has started accepting webOS 3.0 apps designed for the upcoming HP TouchPad tablet. The company released an SDK (software developer kit) for the operating system in February, but now developers can submit apps for including in the webOS App Catalog which will allow TouchPad users to find and download apps using the on-device app store.

HP is also opening its in-app purchasing program. This makes it easier for developers to charge customers for additional content from within an app. For instance you could download a free app and then upgrade to a paid version to eliminate ads. Or you could sign up for subscription magazine or music content within the app or acquire special items in a game.

The HP TouchPad tablet is expected to ship this month, so it actually seems to be a bit on the late side for HP to start accepting webOS 3.0 apps. But hopefully there will be at least a handful of high quality apps available in the App Catalog on launch day.

via PreCentral

HP may have acquired Palm just to get its hands on the webOS operating system (does a company have hands?), but HP CEO Leo Apotheker says the company isn’t ruling out the possibility of sharing webOS with other device makers. When asked whether HP would license webOS for use on phones or other devices from competing companies, Apotheker basically said, sure, why not?

Specifically, he says HP will make webOS available to enterprise customers and small businesses. But when asked if HP would even allow a big name phone-maker such as HTC to license webOS, the CEO said the company would be willing to “entertain” the idea.

This is all a far cry from saying that we will see webOS devices from competitors. But it sounds like HP is at least contemplating becoming a software company as well as a hardware company.

via PreCentral and All Things D