Saving the Enterprise

On Thursday webOS fans received news they were hoping would never come. HP announced that they were discontinuing hardware development on any future webOS devices. Its a day that we all feared would be coming. From the very start of webOS, it was met with poor marketing and poor management... almost doomed to fail. Almost?

As you may or may not know, I'm a fanatic of another franchise that appeared to be on its deathbed but rose from the ashes. Star Trek started in 1966 and after 2 years was almost canceled but was saved for a third year by die hard fans. Strangely enough, it gained popularity during reruns. After a few successful spinoffs series and movies the franchise again became stale and prospects looked grim.

During this lull, loyal fans created series quality webisodes that kept fans engaged while official productions were discontinued for years. One day there was a beacon of hope. Fresh new faces and a basic reimaging of the original series (keeping the core principles of what made it great) gave Star Trek a whole new outlook. Not only did it appeal to the old fans but brought in a whole new generation.

I realize a motion picture is different than a mobile OS platform, but they are both businesses looking to be successful. Although sad news, the future of webOS could (if managed correctly) be brighter than the original launch in June 2009.

What should HP do? I think HP should open up the source code for webOS and allow programmers to create unofficial builds of the OS. This is similar to how Paramount Pictures allows fanfiction as long as money isn't made from its property. Secondly, after a short break HP should rebrand webOS and give it a fresh new look. This rebranding can be as extreme as renaming the OS and giving it an immediately identifiable symbol. iOS has the Apple logo to stand by and Android has the cute green robot. webOS has nothing that it can be identified with, making it fade quickly in and out of people's minds (unless you count those 'Borg Queen' ads).

Parallels between Star Trek and webOS can easily be made in my mind. With smart management, webOS will be able to match up to it's Star Wars-like counterparts.