Microsoft Will Survive The WebOS PC Invasion

Hewlett-Packard apparently plans to ship PCs capable of running the company’s recently acquired webOS.

A 9 March Bloomberg report quotes the company’s CEO Leo Apotheker as saying the move would create “a massive platform” and help differentiate the company’s broad family of products from its rivals. HP’s webOS PCs will apparently dual-boot with Windows.

If you listen to some of the pundits’ reactions, the bell may be readying to toll for Microsoft and Windows.

Galen Gruman over at InfoWorld is calling HP’s move the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

“I fully expect all the dark mutterings I’ve been hearing off the record about Microsoft’s rudderless mobile efforts and lack of interest in a new version of Windows will go public,” he wrote, before suggesting those frustrations represent “an eerie parallel” to “what’s happening in North Africa and the Middle East today.”

Yep, because Microsoft totally equates with what’s going on in Libya right now.

A doom song

Meanwhile, Betanews’ Joe Wilcox also decided it was time to start singing the doom song, albeit in a somewhat more moderate way: “If HP’s webOS strategy plays out – and surely that means someday shipping only its OS rather than paying Windows license fees – Microsoft will lose revenues and its most important strategic partner.”

Let’s take a nice deep breath, boil a cup of soothing tea, and remember that Microsoft’s position in the operating-system market is deeply entrenched.

The latest Net Application data pegs Windows’ market-share at 89.69 percent. By comparison, Apple’s hold on that market totals 5.19 percent – its iOS franchise holds 1.81 percent of that same market, if you aggregate PC operating systems in with mobile ones.

Even if HP manages to execute on its plan to bring webOS to all its PCs, and even if it persuades developers to design a massive portfolio of useful and fun applications for the platform, and even if consumers and IT pros overcome any natural hesitation in embracing new and relatively unknown, and even if webOS manages to integrate a whole host of legacy applications without requiring users to switch over to Windows, it’s unlikely that it’ll erode Microsoft’s market-share in any appreciable way, especially considering that HP is keeping the Windows option as a dual-boot.

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