Larry Dignan of ZDNet has a piece that gets to the heart of the webOS debate.  Basically HP has two choices with Palm’s webOS since they’ve decided not to make webOS devices anymore: Sell the Intellectual Property to someone looking for Patent Protection or License the OS.  He doesn’t see much future in licensing the OS.  To quote his post…

The math doesn’t quite work. HP lost $332 million on corporate investments. That loss basically equates to the Palm unit.

But if HP were to pursue a licensing model it would have to get $5 per device and sell more than 60 million units to break even at the cash burn.

I agree it doesn’t make much sense to HP.  But the point I’d make is it makes even less sense for another hardware manufacturer to make webOS devices. 

HP isn’t going to jump right into licensing.  If they were the only sane thing to do would have been to announce it at today’s conference call and they didn’t.  So even if HP goes the licensing route they’re probably going to debate it internally for  6 months or so.

Now assume HP finds a company that is willing and able to produce a licensed device right away.  It would take that company at least a year to get that device to market (and that would be if they rushed).

So best case scenario it will be 18 months before another webOS device makes it onto store shelves. 

Then we have to look at developers.  webOS developers have been screwed over TWICE in LESS than a YEAR.   Once when Palm almost went out of business and now with HP abandoning webOS.  Larger developers have already bailed (see: Amazon and Adobe who both bailed before their Apps were even finished).  Small developers can’t afford to devote resources to yet another webOS device that may never materialize. 

So having said all that a Palm licensee would have to be a company that…

1.  Is willing to devote considerable resources to a platform that most people think is dead

2.  Is willing to bet Android, Windows and Blackberry’s OS won’t significantly improve by the time they get to market

3.  Is willing to risk their reputation by rushing a device to market (ask Motorola how well that worked out with the Xoom)

4.  Is willing to either (a) accept their platform won’t have developers or (b) pay developers to write programs for the device

No company is ever going to be willing to do all that. 

And don’t look to HTC or Samsung.  Both already have customers committed to the Android platform and both have their own user shells already.  So what lure does webOS really hold for them?  If HTC covers webOS in SenseUI then what advantage does webOS really give them?  Even if Google went crazy and started favoring Motorola for Android updates it would still be easier for HTC or Samsung to fork Android than it would be to start all over with webOS.  Even if they desperately wanted a hedge bet it makes more sense to go with Microsoft (who by necessity is committed to Windows Phone 7 in a way HP could never be). 

So in conclusion webOS is dead.   Undeservedly dead but dead none the less.  Accept it and move on.