HP CEO: We will license webOS to others

Hewlett Packard has ambitious plans for the webOS operating system that it acquired with Palm — in fact, president and chief executive Léo Apotheker said today that those plans aren’t limited to HP devices.

“WebOS will be more than just running inside or on top a particular piece of hardware that HP would make,” said Apotheker, who was speaking at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

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He didn’t announce any specific deals, but he said there’s a broad swath of companies who might want to use webOS, such as appliance-makers. Enterprise companies and small businesses might also want to license a version of webOS that can run behind their corporate firewall.

But what about a company that competes directly with HP? Tech blogger Joshua Topolsky asked: If smartphone maker HTC wanted to build a webOS phone, would HP allow it?

“That is certainly something we would entertain,” Apotheker said.