How HP could create the WebOS PC [Video]

Creating PCs that run Windows and WebOS is a tricky affair, but here’s how it could be made to work

Credit: Ken Wolter / Shutterstock

As reporters were leaving Hewlett-Packard’s recent WebOS extravaganza, the company threw in a mention that the company planned to bring its mobile WebOS, acquired from Palm last year, into its desktop PC line. No details, no timeline — just more vague teasing last week at the Mobile World Congress. HP’s goal is clearly to copy Apple’s strategy of owning the platform across a whole product ecosystem, with WebOS in smartphones, a tablet soon, printers later, and PCs at some point.

But HP is also the leader in sales of Windows PCs, which is a much, much bigger part of its business than WebOS (at least for the foreseeable future). And HP’s foray into touch-enabled PCs over the last 18 months have not gone very far, given Windows’ lack of support in its core OS for touch gestures…