I said in an earlier post, that it’s most likely that we’ll never see the webOS alive on any device ever again, however, it seems that I’ve been proven wrong… Just a quick overview, webOS was originally created by Palm, and then licensed out to HP, and installed on many failed devices, so when I heard that the webOS would live once more, it came as a huge shocker, but apparently, it’s being brought back from the dead, at least one more time. This time, in the hands of LG, and their designs for it might surprise you…
So, what does LG plan on installing ye olde webOS on? A tablet? A smartphone? No, and no. Surprisingly, it seems they plan on putting the OS on a new and upcoming, “SmartTV”.
Apparently, since not many people are bothering to use the OS these days, LG thought it would be a smart move to purchase the operating system, , and that way, they’d have their own OS which they could then put on this new line of TV’s, without having to pay a fortune to either license a larger OS, or design their own from scratch. There’s not many people using the OS, but at least it has a small, yet loyal following… Heck, anyone to still stick with the OS this long, HAS to be loyal, so it won’t be starting with a completely blank slate, like many other operating systems have had to do.
Unfortunately, we aren’t sure how much LG spent to acquire the OS, because the details weren’t released to the public, but I can guess they bought it dirt cheap, since HP was probably just going to scrap it. It’s the old “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, but on a Fortune 500 scale. I guess you could say “One blue chip’s trash is another blue chip”s treasure”. Certainly true in this case…
It’s exciting to think about how these new SmartTV’s will work, and what exactly LG plans to do with them, but right now, all we can do is speculate. Likely, it’s going to be something that might compete with Dish’s new Hopper DVR, and perhaps Tivo, but we’ll have to just wait and see.
Hopefully the upcoming LG Smart TV, will have some better luck with the OS than say, the HP Touchpad, or the other many failed devices previously. Perhaps webOS has just been unlucky on the devices that it’s been installed on, and it’s not such a bad operating system after all, but maybe not. Well, this comes as good news for the webOS fans, hope is not fully lost, as this OS may rise again. And, if it works on LG’s new TV’s, who knows where it could go from there? I feel a real underdog story to be shaping up here, we’ll see…