bakbak

the most important thing mentioned in the article is "targeting the five billion people who live outside the current 'traditional' smartphone market." - whoever understands this will be the world leader in the future ... even the companies like Nokia and Yahoo that looks like failures today can comeback because they understand these 5 billion people better than many others , but somehow the noise of 'traditional' marketers has disillusioned their original strategy... someone has to just pick-up those threads and bring back these companies on track.

i guess it depends how you look at it ... for $100m they are certainly going to get huge mileage for their Brands - its like marketing drive for HP, WebOS, WebOS App catalog etc. + they will make some money by selling apps. Also one has to remember that this brand value creation will help them fetch more $$$ when they decide to sell their h/w business and WebOS business (either the whole OS or licensing it) - All in all $100m is worth loosing (spending) :-)

In fact they should turn this accidental success into super-success by creating HUGE WebOS ecosystem for at least a year and then decide what to do with it - they can get more money by selling or licensing the whole ecosystem with millions and millions of users worldwide than wrapping things up pre-maturely ... also can you imagine how much they could make if they start streaming & selling music, movies, ebooks etc. thru their ecosystem ...