The teaser for HP's Feb. 9 WebOS media invitation reads: "Think big. Think small. Think beyond." It's well known that the company is due to share its plans for phones and tablets following the acquisition of Palm last year, so there's about a 1 percent chance that this "exciting WebOS announcement" is anything but that. (For those of you expecting a WebOS announcement at CES, all I can say is, I told ya.)
WebOS, the Palm operating system currently found on the Pre and Pixi, will likely appear on both tablets and phones, hence "big" and "small." But what about "beyond"? The most obvious would be some kind of set-top box, which makes sense since HP has tried several times to get into that business, without luck. What's surprising, at least to me, is the absence of any Palm branding. It's all HP and WebOS. Alas, Palm — a brand that used to carry a lot more water than it does these days — may well be washed out.
Wilson will be in Las Vegas all week covering the Consumer Electronics Show, culminating in a live one-hour streaming video show on Friday, co-hosted by XM Radio personality and tech commentator Mario Armstrong. For updates on all the tech news that's actually relevant to you, be sure to check technolog.msnbc.com. And don't forget to follow Wilson on Twitter, and shoot him any questions you might have about the massive barge of tech news currently headed our way.
