HP is going to Shut Down TouchPad and webOS operations

If you thought things looked pretty gloomy for HP’s first batch of webOS devices, you weren’t alone. A slow start for the Veer was followed by an even more underwhelming launch for the TouchPad, which was supposed to compete head-on with the iPad 2 — and did, at least on paper. But with excess stock piling up in Best Buy’s warehouses and daily deal site Woot only able to shift a few hundred TouchPads, clearly the public just wasn’t all that keen.

Just days ago, HP let the Pre 3 trickle out in Europe. There was no fanfare to speak of, just word from webOS faithful that the phones did, in fact, ship when orders were placed. A white 64GB TouchPad also appeared, but the word quietly filtered out that it would never find its way to U.S. shores.Now it looks like all that shiny, new HP webOS hardware will be finding its way to the Island of Misfit Gadgets. During HP’s quarterly earnings call today, the company announced that it was officially pulling the plug on webOS device operations — including the Pre and Veer phones and the Touchpad.

HP is looking for “other ways to optimize the value of webOS” now, and that doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. Either it’s going to wind up in HP’s other products — in mid and high-end printers, or as a dual-boot option on its PCs — or HP is going to work on licensing the OS to other smartphone, tablet, and microwave manufacturers (yes, webOS is a good fit for appliances too, HP thinks).Come to think of it, the PC integration might not happen either, if HP does actually plan on selling that division to Samsung as the rumor mill is speculating.

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