While it’s true that Open webOS has successfully been ported to several devices in Alpha form, that’s a long way from being useful. Yes, HP’s spun off gram division announced Open webOS Professional, a version of its open source OS that will incorporate HP’s cloud services such as Synergy (not included in the non-Professional flavor). It’s one thing to have a business model to license software, but without interested partners, that’s all academic. However, according to WebOS Nation, LG just made that business model real.
The consumer electronics giant plans to ditch its older, stale, and unpopular NetCast smart TV software and instead load Open webOS Professional. Allegedly, LG isn’t happy with the terms involved with making a Google TV and are concerned about the eventual day when Apple decides to stop seeing the TV as a hobby and gets serious about the AppleTV line.
This is absolutely not going to happen overnight, and that’s if it makes it to market at all. Sources at WebOS Nations say that LG and HP signed an agreement in June and they’re hoping to show the first TVs off at CES 2013. Even that seems fast to me. After all, while webOS already has Pandora, it lacks apps for most major services that you would expect to find on a smart TV like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, or a functional Facebook client.
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