Loopinsight has an interview with HP’s developer relations guy, Richard Kerris, where he basically says that WebOS is HP’s enterprise strategy, not their consumer play. He says:
“We think there’s a better opportunity for us to go after the enterprise space and those consumers that use PCs,” said Kerris. “This market is in it’s infancy and there is plenty of room for both of us to grow.”
“We think the world of Apple and have the utmost respect for their products,” said Kerris. “It would be ignorant for us to say that we are going to take it [the market] away from Apple.”
Beneath this scraping and bowing is an important consideration: there is no viable tablet for the enterprise and all signs point to Blackberry fumbling things with their absurd Playbook. Knowledge workers will need (read “want”) tablets and HP is putting itself in place to give them to them.
As flawed as the TouchPad is, it’s not as bad as people let on. It works, it will have a stronger support base than Android on the aggregate, and HP will put its might behind WebOS, bringing it to various desktops and devices as an alternative to Google and Apple. It will end up on devices like printers and probably office “desktop tablets” and other boring stuff, a market that Cisco, also, is trying to grab with their offerings.
It never hurts to be boring in the IT space, and if HP knows anything it’s how to be boring.