HP Will Stop Supporting webOS Cloud Services in 2015
It’s no secret that HP is reorganizing its company in efforts to provide specialized services in two distinct sectors. Cloud has disrupted HP’s traditional PC hardware business and while HP realizes there will always be a need for desktop hardware, the PC and enterprise hardware provider has announced that it will segregate the two businesses with HP’s intentions of splitting into two distinct publicly traded companies.
A blog post on HP’s palm website breaks down the frequently asked questions surrounding the discontinuation of cloud services for webOS. HP explains their decision to ax cloud services support for webOS my saying: “Shutting down webOS cloud services is part of an orderly end of life program. HP announced the end of webOS devices (phones and tablets) over 3 years ago but the services were kept running to allow customers to continue to have a richer user experience. The user count has dwindled to the point where it is no longer viable to keep the services running. This does not disable the devices currently running in the field.”
The post goes on to mention that there will be no more system updates and that all cloud services will be unavailable for the OS starting January 15th 2015. Those who went out and bought the HP touchpad will not be completely out of luck. There are several video tutorials that show users who to convert their webOS tablet to one of the newest Android operating systems. This will allow users to continue to use their HP tablet as opposed it to virtually becoming bricked.
The discontinuation of service regarding the webOS platform is a part of the bigger focus at HP to hone in products that make the company money. Although HP spent billions acquiring Palm which owned the rights to the webOS operating system, the webOS platform never really took off like HP had expected.
