H.P. and LG Put WebOS on Television

Maybe the little operating system that couldn’t will gain a new life inside televisions, cars and washing machines.

Hewlett-Packard, which grabbed the WebOS mobile operating system when it bought Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, has sold to LG Electronics the WebOS source code for an undisclosed price. In addition, what H.P. termed “many dozens” of employees will transfer to LG, based in Seoul, South Korea. H.P. is retaining the patents and a cloud-based infrastructure for secure management of applications.

WebOS, which was released to much fanfare and technical admiration but never caught on because H.P. never made a device that caught on, will remain an open source product on which other parties can develop software, both companies said. If people do find good uses for it, it’s possible that more companies will want to use WebOS, which could benefit H.P.

Hewlett-Packard doesn’t use it in a new tablet computer it announced over the weekend. The Slate 7 uses Android.

“Inthe world today, patents are valuable,” said William L. Veghte, H.P.’s chief operating officer. “We’re retaining the ability to leverage WebOS.” It seems likely, however, that H.P. will play at most a role of servicing devices on behalf of consumer companies like LG.

For LG, the product may be a way to turn televisions and other devices into hubs for a household’s computers, tablets and other connected gear. WebOS was notable for multitasking capabilities, along with a well-regarded user interface.

“We’d like to apply this technology to the next generation of smart TVs and expand it to other devices,” said Skott Ahn, LG Electronics’s president and chief technology officer. He described the operating system as having strong “cross-platform” capabilities that would make it useful for consumers “who have a lot more use of a ‘second screen,’ with things like PCs and Android.”

LG already makes personal computers and smartphones that use Google’s Android ! operating system. Mr. Ahn said LG had no immediate plans to make a WebOS smartphone. “Now Android is prevailing,” he said.

Other uses for WebOS, he said, might include signs, smart cars, and home appliances. In other words, places where there are not already dominant operating systems. “We’d like to secure a software platform across all devices,” Mr. Ahn said.

For H.P., selling these parts of Palm brings it closer to ending a bad memory. Given that H.P. never made a successful product with Palm technology, this sale most likely did not recover the purchase price or investments H.P. later made in a Palm-based smartphone and tablet or in trying to build a developer community for WebOS.

The products had their premiere in February 2011 and were killed six months later, after poor sales. H.P. made WebOS an open source product in January 2012.

H.P. just announced one of the lowest-price Android tablets. If LG is able to make a success of WebOS smart televisions and cars, its patents could become valuable, along with the applications management business.

Meg Whitman, H.P.’s chief executive, has said that smartphones remain a priority, but the company is wary of moving into a business with an entirely different distribution system of phone stores and carriers.

“If you’re not careful, you can lose a lot of money” in smartphones, Ms. Whitman said in an interview after last week’s earnings release. “We’re still working on it.”