But that's not going to happen.

Who in their right mind is going to commit real dollars to developing for a dead platform that might have only a few percent chance of one day being reborn? And with a tiny customer base, even after firesale prices?

Development for Android based tablets isn't exactly fairing well and that has multiple companies pouring millions of dollars into keeping it going, let alone Google continuing development and improvement.

Anyone at HP who thinks this is a good idea is completely out to lunch. The only reason to announce such a move is to further damage their stock. Perhaps top executives are all secretly shorting? They're doing a fantastic job of running the company into the ground and it's only getting deeper each day.

The only reason I can still see for licensing WebOS is for vertical market applications. And even then it's a really tough sell, because you'd probably be much better off with the "free" solution in Android for that. HP has done such a fantastic job at tainting this product that I don't know if it has any future at all in anyone else's hands.