Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Why webOS failed
I have been a Palm fan since the beginning. I have owned a Palm III, a Palm V, a Treo and a Pre. The first software ever shipped by Funambol was an app for Palm OS in 2002 (ooh, the memories). I have been close to the Palm world for years, including the beginning of webOS with Funambol. I am no expert and I have no inside information, of course, but I have been thinking about the demise of webOS for a few days and I finally made up my mind.
webOS failed because it missed the Geek Factor.
The OS is absolutely great. Well designed, fantastic UI, fast enough (it could have been faster, but that was a limit of the HW as well). Missing a personal cloud element - which is key these days - but they had transparent sync at least (and full cloud backup). What was it missing?
It was missing developers.
It is hard for me to say that a phone failed because it lacked developers, since I always said that a mobile device is a fashion accessory. These days, though, with the devices looking very similar one to the other, the apps count. The cloud integration counts. Bluntly, Geeks rule again.
Think about it. In the PC world, you would ask a Geek (with a capital G, there are many phonies out there ;-) for a suggestion on what to buy. In mobile, you would just pick the coolest phone in the store. Now that the smartphones look the same, the pendulum has swung back to the Geeks. You get them to develop for your phone, you have apps. You get them excited, they will promote your device to their friends. They are back.
Take Android for example. Was the G1 the worst device ever built? Probably. What about the Geeks? They bought it. They developed on it. They evangelized it. It was open source. Once good looking Android phones came out, the apps were there. The consumers were ready to go.
The Pre ignored the developers. It was a closed phone. Do you remember the creepy ad with the girl? I do. Not very attractive to a Geek, sorry. The Pre was a phone built for girls (with a mirror in the back), while the developer world is still (sadly) male.
The genius of the combo Verizon-Motorola-Google with the Droid was to go for the Geek. The phone was black, sturdy, incredibly male. The ads were all about black and bold and violent. It was a male phone. A Geek phone (as you know, Geeks like sci-fi and the Droid was all about it). It had the Geek Factor.
It is sad to see webOS go. I asked HP long ago to open source it and I still think it would have been a great idea. It would have captivated developers. Honestly, it is still a valid one today. I do not think there is a chance for webOS to regain the Geek Factor, but it would be a start.
Posted by Fabrizio Capobianco at 07:12
6 Comments:
arjw said...
Don't know if going open source would have helped webOS. I would have rather liked to have seen the W3C step up and make webOS's methods, if not the OS itself, the preferred method to merge what was happening with web services and mobile devices. In that respect, it wouldn't have needed much more for validation other than other manufacturers stepping up to the plate there. Geeks aren't needed for that.
Comment Posted at 10:51
Antonio said...
Hi Fabrizio. I agree Your post and quote it, but If a hardware company set a CEO from a software company the future is clear. Maybe HP see itself like IBM with a cloud service future. About Android I don't think it's totaly open source. Platform use Java ecosystem, a language not really open. Great would be a new way full open. What do You think about a mobile OS ( like webOS ) open source plus Python like official develop language. In my opinion a potential Geek dream. Bye from a geek that try to be a Geek.
Comment Posted at 15:32
Fabrizio said...
Antonio, I believe it is too late to enter the race for a mobile OS. We are at the point where the competition is killing some OS. The category of "Other" is becoming insignificant. Maybe next time ;-)
Comment Posted at 15:37
I agree it's a shame. I was a Palm fan for a long time buying a PalmPilot 1000 back when it first came out. I had been holding off on hoping on the smartphone bandwagon (due to costs) and was ready but waiting for Palm to come out with their new OS since Garnet was getting pretty old and outdated. I eventually gave up and jumped on the Android bandwagon when the G1 was released. By the time WebOS was announced I was intrigued and really like what they had done, but there just wasn't enough pull for me to jump ship at that point. I'm a happy Android user, but it is sad to see WebOS and Palm go the way they have.
Comment Posted at 08:24
Jason Lefkowitz said...
I think this is correct. Another data point I would add to your argument is Palm's inexplicable failure to have an SDK available to everyone contemporaneously with the launch of the Pre. I bought a Pre on launch week and desperately wanted to program it, but Palm at that time would only distribute the SDK to a few partner companies; it wasn't available to the unwashed public. If I remember correctly the phone launched in July and the SDK wasn't generally available until October. By that point nobody cared, because it was clear that the phone hadn't been the hit Palm needed it to be.
Their whole developer story at that time was completely messed up, which I found baffling considering how much of their pitch for the phone was based on WebOS being easy to develop for...
Comment Posted at 09:07
Fabrizio said...
Jason, I agree. I believe the reason is that they went for a Web OS, assuming people will just write web apps, then they had to move into the SDK world, even native. The same happened to Apple with the iPhone, but they had way more time to adjust. SDKs are not easy to make, BTW. If you screw it up, you have to maintain backward compatibility for ages, so you have to be careful. But in the case of WebOS, it hurt them because they were late to market already.
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