So wait, they're going to support a platform for which no new devices are being manufactured to run on? It sounds like they're planning to license it, I guess, if they can. (They probably won't be able to.)
You know, back in the day everybody and his dog was telling Apple to license MacOS (I mean OS 7-9, not OS X). Apple supporters would tirelessly explain that turning MacOS into a commodity OS would make it neither fish nor fowl: It wouldn’t have the reach of Windows nor would it have the seamless integration of an Apple-only product. There was a brief and half-hearted attempt to license it which only cannibalized Apple’s existing sales. Steve killed it the moment he returned as CEO.
Now HP has declared that despite being a dominant manufacturer of PCs, it cannot win in the personal computing business and it has no marketing muscle nor manufacturing chops to succeed and make money in the phone or tablet businesses.
Only everyone talks about how great their OS is. This sounds exactly like Apple when they were all but acquired by NeXT in a reverse takeover. Only instead of doubling down on their manufacturing and marketing like Apple did, they’re exiting the business and licensing their OS. I am not going to predict that they will fail, but I am going to say it will be interesting to see what happens with licensing and to compare it (if only for entertainment purposes) with what happened with Apple.
IBM was synonymous with the PC especially in business and government and especially with Thinkpad laptops. Hell, other PCs were always called "IBM Compatible" because an the modern PC was really just a compatible copy of IBM's version of the personal computer. But IBM wasn't executing well and failing to keep up with the Dells of the world on the consumer side of things.
So IBM spun off its consumer products like its PC division (to Lenovo), its peripherals like keyboards and mice (to Unicomp), and its printers (as Lexmark). Then it doubled down on big iron, midrange servers, and made a huge play on software and consulting services.
In the end, IBM survives, is profitable, and nobody thinks it's going away any time soon. What remains of HP has long been growing into a copy of the modern IBM with a huge, low margin PC business hanging off it that grows only by cannibalizing the market share of other low margin PC manufacturers exiting the market entirely. To think that the remaining half of the company wouldn't survive after spinning off the PC business is just silly.
Should HP's management be fighting a two front war against IBM and Apple? Maybe not. Apple dumped Xserve, has nearly dumped the Mac Pro, and pretty much ignores enterprise users entirely despite being on a stratospheric trajectory. WebOS probably means as much to HP's bottom line as Xserve did to Apple's and HP is treading water.
Consolidating on a consistent corporate vision is the first step to being like Apple. HP's vision is all muddled between being a consumer company and being a business company. Hopefully HP can figure out who it wants to be so it can start doing it well.
My guess is that your licensing guess is correct. I do hope it succeeds. I feel it's a better option in the long run than Android.