HP may have canceled the Pre 2 smartphone, but the company is still rolling out software updates… for now. This week HP released webOS 2.2.5 for some Pre 2 handsets, adding new features including:

• Support for Skype voice calls and instant messages
• Ability to share text messages and calls with an HP TouchPad over Bluetooth
• Sync improvements for Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and contacts

Up until now Skype was only available on the HP Pre 3 or the Verizon Pre 2. This udpate brings it to additional webOS phones — but not all Pre 2 phones will get the update.

PreCentral reports the update appears to be available for unlocked European GSM phones, but not unlocked US phones or Verizon phones.

Have you ever wondered how many webOS devices Palm and HP sold before unceremoniously cancelling the latest webOS phones and tablets this summer? About 4.2 million.

The folks at webOS Internals have put together an estimate of the number of webOS devices activated over time, and since 2009 it looks like that’s about how many people have created webOS profiles.

Unfortunately the number is far from official since it doesn’t come from HP — and there’s no way to tell how many people are actively using webOS phones or tablets today. But here’s how the figure was calculated.

When you fire up a webOS device for the first time it will ask you to create a profile. Each profile gets a unique number, and every new user gets a number that’s one higher than the last person to register.

While webOS Internals hasn’t looked at everyone’s numbers, they’ve asked users who have installed a homebrew app called Impostah to report their registration dates and numbers — and they’ve created a pretty nifty chart that shows the highest numbers they could find for each date, giving us an idea of how the platform grew over time.

WebOS may not have grown as fast as HP would have liked, but it’s interesting to see that in 2009 and 2010 there was a pretty steady growth in the number of people registering webOS devices. It started to taper off a bit in 2011, but there was a pretty healthy spike (or unhealthy, depending on how you look at it) this summer when the HP TouchPad tablet was sold off at fire-sale pricing.

The number might not get much higher. HP hasn’t yet completely killed off webOS, but the company won’t be producing any more hardware running the mobile operating system. Unless HP finds someone to license or buy webOS, it’s likely that the platform’s days are numbered.

It’s also possible that some (or many) of the folks represented by this chart may have stopped using those devices though, and moved onto Android, iOS, paper, or other platforms.

via The Verge and Geek News Central

Officially HP hasn’t yet decided whether to kill off its webOS division. Unofficially, The Guardian reports it’s probably going to happen.

During a conference call discussing the decision not to spin off HP’s PC business as a separate company, HP executives yesterday said that a decision on webOS would be made in the coming months.

But the Guardian has been interviewing folks off the record, and members of HP’s webOS group say that it’s practically a done deal. Top level members of the webOS team have been jumping ship recently and if HP does decide to kill the operating system, it could affect hundreds of jobs.

It would also mean the end of the line for future webOS phones and tablets.

This summer HP canceled production of webOS hardware including the Pre and Veer smartphones and the HP TouchPad tablet. But the company has reportedly been looking at licensing the software to other hardware companies looking for an alternative to Android or Windows Phone. So far there haven’t been any takers.

There’s an active community of homebrew developers for webOS, so I suspect existing products will have a cult following for years to come. Heck, some people still walk around with Apple Newton handheld devices, even though Apple hasn’t made a Newton since 1998. But if The Guardian’s information is correct, the future for official support for webOS products could be pretty slim.

Members of the CyanogenMod team have already started porting Google Android to run on the TouchPad, which could help keep the tablet usable long after webOS support ends. We’ve also seen some efforts to port Android to run on the Pre smartphone — but the project doesn’t seem to have gotten very far.

HP is killing off its webOS hardware division, which means pretty soon there will be no more HP TouchPad, Pre or Veer devices. But the company still has high hopes fro the webOS software. HP may still install webOS on future PCs, printers, and other devices, and the company has been seeking a partner willing to license webOS for their own phones or tablets.

Clearly that partner isn’t going to be Motorola. That company has been building Google Android-only devices for a few years and recently Google announced plans to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion.

Nokia, meanwhile, has struck a deal with Microsoft that will bring Windows Phone 7 to future Nokia smartphones.

Among the big phone players that leaves HTC and Samsung… but now it looks like we can probably scratch Samsung off the list as well. There’s been a rumor floating around that Samsung could flat out buy the webOS operating system from HP, but speaking at the IFA trade show in Berlin, Samsung CEO Choi Gee Sung poured cold water on that idea.

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Following HP’s announcement that it would discontinue all webOS hardware including smartphones and tablets, Microsoft’s Brandon Walsh reached out to webOS developers, promising free phones and other tools if they were interested in developing for Windows Phone 7. So far he’s received over 200 replies.

For its part, HP is trying to convince webOS developers not to jump ship. While the company will no longer make devices that run webOS, HP hasn’t yet put the operating system to bed. Instead, officials are hoping to get other companies to license the software for use on their own devices, much the way Microsoft and Google already do with their smartphone operating systems.

The problem is that it’s hard to see a future for webOS at the moment. Less than two months ago HP was gung ho about the TouchPad tablet. Today the company is liquidating its inventory by selling the tablet for just $99. Since there currently aren’t any other companies using webOS, who’s to say that a month from now HP might not just pull the plug on the software division as well?

HP is trying to persuade developers to stick around, and promises to keep supporting webOS. But all HP has to offer at the moment are words and a user base that won’t be growing for a while (at least not once this weekend’s HP TouchPad fire sale is over). Microsoft, on the other hand, is giving developers free phones.

HP announced today that the company would discontinue its webOS hardware products in the fourth quarter of 2011. That means we can say goodbye to the HP TouchPad tablet and the HP Pre, Veer, and other webOS phones. But the company isn’t killing webOS software… at least not yet.

During a conference call with reporters today HP executives said that the company is exploring its options for webOS. The software has been well received by users and developers, according to CEO Leo Apotheker — but the company’s phones and tablets haven’t had much traction in the market.

So HP is looking at a variety of options for squeezing some value out of the webOS software that it paid $1.2 billion to acquire last year.

Here are some of the possibilities that are still on the table:

• Licensing webOS to other companies to install on their phones, tablets, and other hardware.
• Using the software on HP’s own devices (presumably this could include computers or printers)
• Selling the webOS assets to another company (Apotheker didn’t specially state this, but it’s clearly a possibility at this point.

Right now it looks like HP’s primary goal will be to find hardware partners willing to license the software. But given HP and Palm’s difficulty getting consumers to buy webOS products, I have to wonder why any other companies would want to adopt the platform.

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.

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.