HP lays off 275 more WebOS employees
by Steven Mostyn - Feb 29 2012, 13:21
Image: HP.
Having already abandoned its TouchPad tablet computer and announced its intention to push WebOS into open-source territory, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has this week revealed it is to shed some 275 jobs from its struggling software division.
The latest round of WebOS job losses follow on from an initial cull of 500 that hit in September of 2011. This leaves only 325 members of staff attached to the business arm HP acquired after splashing $1.2 billion USD for Palm Inc. in April of 2010.
“As WebOS continues the transition from making mobile devices to open-source software, it no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before,” the company said in a CRN report.
“This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well equipped to deliver an open-source WebOS and sustain HP’s commitment to the software over the long term,” it added.
According to HP, version 1.0 of ‘Open WebOS’ is scheduled for release in September after the Linux-based system is successfully shifted from being a proprietary creation through to a full open-source platform.
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