David Hamilton

Why Android, not iOS, killed WebOS

Yesterday HP announced that it was killing of its WebOS-based phone and tablet products. It has also said that it will keep WebOS alive (in other areas), but, since HP doesn’t licence WebOS to any other mobile hardware manufacturers, if is clear that WebOS is dead as far as the mobile space is concerned.

Some bloggers have tried to hand the credit (if one can call it so, as I think this leaves the mobile space considerably poorer) to Apple, and the difficulty in matching the iPad and iPhone. And certainly Apple’s cost-effectiveness in production is a problem for its rivals to overcome in the short term, but I don’t think a company the size of HP would regard it as insuperable.

No, I believe that Android, not the iPad or iPhone, killed WebOS.

My reason is that Google is clearly determined to pour billions into Android (another $12.5 billion this week alone), without trying to make any money out of it, or indeed having any direct revenue. Their strategy widely believed to be one of building a ring of defences around Google’s multi-billion advertising business (see The Freight Train That Is Android), by giving away Android for free and making no money out of it. How can anyone compete with that?

HP took the long view and realised that, unless you have a lot of mobile software patents (Microsoft makes more money from Android than Windows Phone 7), there is no point of even bothering to try to compete in the mobile OS market.

This provides a great example of how Google (contrary to its recent protestations) is actually stifling competition and innovation (and free isn’t always good).