Samsung may get webOS as next in-house mobile OS

Samsung couldn't escape industry talk Monday as a new rumor made it a candidate to buy webOS after HP's spinoff plans. The company would reportedly be looking for another self-run OS to challenge not just the iPhone but Android, Samsung's current platform of choice. HP's former VP of marketing for the Personal Systems Group, Raymond Wah, has already supposedly been poached away to manage Samsung's PC business, Digitimes said.

The motivation may come from Google's buyout of Motorola. In spite of an insistence by Google that it would run Motorola at arm's length, Samsung may be nervous that Google will follow through on rumors of emulating the iPhone strategy and promptly competing against its own Android partners. Getting webOS would also be more feasible than buying HP's PC business because of the much smaller scale.

Samsung already has its own self-developed OS, Bada, but has only had enough traction to outsell Windows Phone and not much more. The OS has been deliberately reserved for lower-end phones like the Wave series and is considered somewhat redundant next to Samsung's customization of Android. WebOS is intended for everything from entry smartphones through to tablets and would be unique; HP and Palm devices mostly struggled based on hardware quality, not software.

None of the involved companies have agreed to comment.

By Electronista Staff

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industry, Google, HP, Android, Motorola, Samsung, mobile phones, webOS, bada