LG Electronics has announced that they have acquired webOS operating system technology from HP that include, source code, associated documentation, engineering talent and related websites associated with webOS for development of next-generation Smart TV technology. They did not reveal the price for the deal.
HP bought Palm back in 2010 for $1.2 Billion. In 2011 announced the company announced that they would discontinue webOS operations, and later made it Open Source. LG will maintain webOS’ as an open-source platform and would continue to help improve open source projects of Open WebOS and Enyo.
HP has announced that they would continue to support Palm users. They would retain ownership of all of Palm’s cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts.
LG would also receive licenses under HP’s intellectual property (IP) for use with its webOS products, including patents acquired from Palm covering fundamental operating system and user interface technologies now in broad use across the industry.
While LG is trying to improve their Smart TVs with the webOS platform, HP unveiled their first Android-powered low-cost tablet, Slate 7 at the MWC 2013 earlier this week. LG already unveiled Google Smart TV at CES last month.