webOS
More info
- Creator
- Palm
- Released
- Type
- Operating system
- Owner
- LG Electronics
Palm's elegant 2009 Linux phone OS that HP bought, killed off — and that today survives inside LG's TVs.
webOS launched in 2009 on the Palm Pre and punched far above its market share. Its interface was built on "cards" — apps stacked like physical cards you could flick through and throw away — and on web technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) for apps, via the Mojo and later Enyo frameworks. Multitasking felt natural in a way neither the iPhone nor early Android managed.
Palm never turned the praise into sales. HP bought the company in 2010 for $1.2 billion, shipped the TouchPad tablet in 2011, and axed the hardware after seven weeks. The code was open-sourced, and in 2013 LG bought it as the operating system for its smart TVs — where webOS still runs today.