HP"s webOS business suffered a big black eye back in August as sales of its HP TouchPad tablet were so bad that it decided to discontinue the product and halt any future webOS hardware development. Now a new report from PreCentral.net claims it has received internal memos from HP. These memos reveal the company has decided to split its webOS division in two with the software and hardware sides moving to other divisions of the company.
The report claims that the software side of the webOS division will be moved to HP’s Office of Strategy and Technology. HP has already said it wants to continue developing the webOS operating system, and has hinted strongly that it wants to license the OS to third party hardware companies. As far as the hardware side of the webOS division, the report claims it will be moved to HP"s Personal Systems Group. That"s basically the PC side of HP"s business. As we have reported before, HP has publicly stated it would prefer to spin off that division into its own stand alone company, although a final decision on such a move has yet to be made.
HP acquired the webOS business when it purchased the Palm company back in April 2010. In July 2011 it launched the HP TouchPad, a tablet PC designed to go up against Apple"s iPad. However, HP halted production of the TouchPad in August and sold its remaining stock at fire sale prices. The company will make one final batch of the tablets available for sale later this year.