LG Acquires WebOS From HP, To Ship WebOS On TVs

LG Electronics announced today that they are acquiring webOS from Hewlett-Packard. The game-plan for this mobile Linux operating system that originally came from Palm is to use it on LG Smart TVs.

WebOS has been pretty much a dead mobile Linux platform since HP canned the TouchPads and I didn't expect to hear anything more of it. Open webOS is also not exactly a vibrant project. Thus it was rather surprising to hear today that LG has acquired the software platform and they intend to use it on "Smart TVs" going forward.

As part of this acquisition of all the webOS source-code, LG Electronics also picks up some of the HP/Palm patents related to webOS, engineering resources, and HP licenses. LG says they won't be using webOS on smart-phones as it was originally intended for but rather to load it up on their Smart TVs.

The press release announcing the LG+HP webOS deal can be found at LG.com.