UPDATED 15:00 EDT / JUNE 02 2011

HP Takes Software Angle to New Heights: webOS Everywhere

Leo Apotheker, CEO of Hewlett-Packard for less than a year now, spoke at the D9 conference. He discussed many things, including webOS, and some of his company’s plans in the consumer and non-consumer markets.

Right at the start of his interview with AllThingD’s Walt Mossberg, Apotheker said that HP is looking to “position itself at the convergence of all these technologies” – elaborating that this includes cloud, -real-time analytics and security. The CEO emphasized this point.

“You want to make sure that all the data you have is accessible. But now you have to secure it all. Corporations or individuals want everything to be secure.

We’d like to create an environment where you can use data in an open and secure and context-aware environment.”

After highlighting that, the conversation shifted to webOS. Apotheker noted that webOS did not get as much momentum as Android or iOS by now because Palm, the original developer of the platform which HP acquired, didn’t have the resources to perfect and promote webOS on a wider-scale. That’s what Hewlett-Packard is doing now.

Apotheker said that the operating system will be installed on every PC (and printers over $100) the company will ship. “In the beginning, it will sit on top of Windows,” meaning it may even eventually replace it. HP has additional plans for webOS as well, and is considering to license it to other manufacturers such as HTC – Apotheker did not dismiss this claim in a response to a question from the audience.

HP’s consumer business accounts for only 26 percent of revenues, and the company is gearing up webOS for enterprise use as well. In this space the company already got a very prominent position as the no. 1 private cloud infrastructure provider, and Apotheker commented that HP is also branching out to offer Platform-as-a-Service products.


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