WebOS Roundup reports that it’s getting to be very clear HP is no longer a hardware partner for Windows Phone 7, after Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer specifically left HP out of the list that he read off during his presentation on Microsoft’s new smartphone platform at WPC10. This is not surprising news for anyone who has been following the acquisition of Palm by HP, as it was recently announced by their CEO that HP was going “all in” on WebOS.
HP has also been spending a lot of money buying up a stockpile of cloud-based services, including online photo service Snapfish, music streaming service Melodeo, and video streaming service Motionbox. Melodeo and Motionbox will be integrated into Snapfish, and rolled out to HP’s upcoming line of smartphones, tablets and web-based printers unified around the Palm WebOS operating system.
It is speculated that HP specifically targeted Melodeo because of its iTunes syncing feature. Early versions of WebOS allowed the phone’s USB port to emulate an iPod, enabling it to be recognized by iTunes as an iPod device. Apple filed a lawsuit against Palm for implementing this feature, and pursued an “updates” war with Palm, blocking WebOS from syncing with newer versions of iTunes. Eventually, Palm lost the fight and removed iTunes syncing support from subsequent versions of WebOS. With Melodeo integrated into Snapfish, WebOS will gain a legitimate platform for syncing with iTunes.
All of this is welcome news to early adopters of the revolutionary WebOS platform. It is clear that HP is ready to take WebOS to the next level.
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