iPad 2 On WebOS Hack Reveals Surprising Fact For HP

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The reports are coming in about a recent unusual hacking that turned into a shock that most at HP probably didn’t want to see. Turns out a couple of engineers out at HP reportedly managed to hack the iPad 2 into running WebOS, and what they found when they put it through its paces was disturbing on a variety of levels.

Turns out that, when they ran WebOS on iPad 2 hardware, the iPad 2 didn’t explode, or open a rift to a horrible parallel universe, but rather, the iPad 2 ran WebOS twice as fast as the HP T0uchPad could do the job. There are some differences, of course, across the two brands’ hardware loadouts, but the sheer difference in performance between the two platforms came as a clear shock.

And it only got worse when the HP engineers discovered that they could launch WebOS in Apple’s Mobile Safari browser as a web app and still get better performance on it than they could get on the TouchPad.

This may well be at least part of what lead to recent reports that HP was considering divesting its WebOS line, and comes as a pretty substantial blow to the company in general. HP’s goal, as we’re all pretty familiar with, is to become “cooler than Apple”, and if Apple continues to eat HP’s collective lunch in a hardware sense, it’s going to have a very difficult time achieving that goal.

And the news couldn’t have come at a worse time as, at last report, a hardware refresh was about a year off, and considering that places like Best Buy are currently sitting on a substantial stockpile of TouchPads, it doesn’t help HP’s image much at all.

But what do you guys think here? Is the problem one of hardware for HP? Or is something else going on here that may be affecting their corporate futures? We always like hearing from you guys, so head on down to the comments section and let us know what you think.