HP to sell webOS to S Korea's LG Electronics

Hewlett-Packard, (HP), the world's largest PC maker, yesterday said that it will sell its webOS unit  which came as part of its $1.2-billion acquisition of Palm Inc in 2010, to South Korea's LG Electronics Inc, for an undisclosed sum.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG will acquire the source code, associated documentation, engineering talent and related websites associated with webOS.

As part of the transaction, LG also will 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.

HP will retain ownership of all of Palm's cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure, contracts and will continue to support Palm users.

LG, which has earlier worked with HP on WebOS, will use the operating software, to support its next-generation Web-connected Smart TV technology. LG is the world's second-largest TV maker.

In August 2011, HP said that it would stop development of its webOS smartphones and tablets after its flagship TouchPad tablet running on the WebOS software bombed in the market.