The new CEO at Hewlett-Packard has abandoned plans to sell-off its PC division – but sources believe the firm is poised to shut down its webOS mobile business after failing to find a buyer.
Former CEO Leo Apotheker – who was fired last month – put both businesses up for sale, but his successor, Meg Whitman, said yesterday that HP’s Personal Systems Group (PSG), where the PC business is housed, would be retained. “It's clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees," said Whitman in a statement.
But the future is less clear for webOS, the mobile operating system that HP inherited via its US$1.2 billion acquisition of smartphone-maker Palm in April 2010.
According to sources at The Guardian, HP is to shut down the division, which could mean 500 job losses. The report notes that, despite HP's attempts to find a potential buyer or licencee for webOS, there has been no apparent interest from outside the company. The unit was responsible for HP’s short-lived TouchPad tablet device.
Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s CEO, told The Guardian on Thursday that he had no immediate interest in buying or licensing webOS after completing the acquisition of the rest of the Sony Ericsson business. Apparent interest from HTC and Amazon is also thought to have come to nothing.
Other reports this week quoted HP CEO Whitman as saying the vendor will return to manufacturing tablet devices, but instead of using webOS, the company will revive its relationship with Microsoft and deploy Windows 8-based units.
According to the newspaper, some HP execs at the unit have already moved on. Richard Kerris resigned earlier this week as HP's vice-president of webOS worldwide developer relations, in order to join Nokia “to do essentially the same job.”
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