The story of the death of Palm and webOS:
The Verge has a great slice of history -- how webOS went from darling to dead in 31 months:
Thirty-one.
That’s the number of months it took Palm, Inc. to go from the darling of International CES 2009 to a mere shadow of itself, a nearly anonymous division inside the HP machine without a hardware program and without the confidence of its owners. Thirty-one months is just barely longer than a typical American mobile phone contract.
Understanding exactly how Palm could drive itself into irrelevance in such a short period of time will forever be a subject of Valley lore. There are parts of the story that are simply lost, viewpoints and perspectives that have been rendered extinct either through entrenched politicking or an employee base that has long since given up hope and dispersed for greener pastures. What we do know, though, is enough to tell a tale of warring factions, questionable decisions, and strategic churn, interspersed by flashes of brilliance and a core team that fought very hard at times to keep the dream alive.
The following is an account of Palm’s ascent prior to the launch of the Pre, the subsequent decline, and eventual end, assembled through interviews with a number of current and former employees.
The legacy of webOS is that the mobile Web is everywhere.
iPhone and Android users have Palm to thank for daring to pioneer the mobile Web.
man i am so glad i did not go to work for these drips
They had a lot of great engineers.
It's tough to be the first mover.
Yes, and really tough if your competitor spends billions to buy the supply chain!
What strikes me in reading that history lesson is that neither Apple nor Google killed Palm.
Palm killed Palm.
