HP has missed out on a fantastic opportunity with webOS. The company was in a position, by hook or by crook, to give webOS the kind of wide distribution that even Apple would be impressed by. It just had to spend some cash to do it. As an operating system, webOS has what it takes to be a success. The operating system's user interface was well-received, and it has strong concepts, such as unified messaging and card-based multitasking, that rival platforms are only starting to compete with. It also had a development model familiar to millions of Web developers.

What it needed was a bit of momentum. A reason for those Web developers to start developing for it, a reason for mobile operators to start caring about it and promoting it. Palm's advertising, with the creepy girl, was lackluster. HP took that to the next level. I was excited about, and interested in, the Pre3 when it was announced earlier in the year. But I didn't even realize it had launched a few days ago, such was HP's total unwillingness to promote the thing. Bring back the creepy girl—at least it's something.

And yet it seems to me that HP had a perfect opportunity to get webOS into people's hands across the world, thanks to its enormous PC business. Granted, it's now obvious that HP doesn't like its PC business very much. But its reach and penetration, across both the corporate and consumer worlds, is substantial.

So here's what I would have done if I ran HP. I would recognize that a successful mobile and tablet platform can earn a boatload of cash. It's a market that's absolutely worth going after. I would recognize that with webOS I had the fundamentals of this platform, but lacked the critical mass of users that is required to create a sustainable platform.

So I would have done two things. One cheap and easy, one expensive and easy.

Paying the price, whatever it is

The cheap and easy one is to port webOS to Windows. Or rather, to port the webOS runtime environment. Not the Linux-y bits, but the JavaScript-y, HTML5-y bits. There's probably not even a huge amount to do here; WebKit already runs on Windows, and underlying technology like node.js is gaining a first-class Windows port. I'd then develop a bunch of neat applications, plumb the entire thing into webOS's App Catalog, and preinstall them on every HP desktop and laptop that the company sells. I'd also make it a free download with a simple user-friendly installer.

This wouldn't be enough to save webOS. But it would be cheap and easy to do, and it would put the technology in front of people. It would make the webOS development stack something that developers knew about, and thought about, and could trivially use to make their own applications. It's all about making developers recognize that webOS exists and think "oh hey, this is neat."

Now for the expensive part. Give away the hardware. You buy a cheap HP consumer laptop or netbook? You get a Veer. Buy a more expensive one? You get a Pre3 or a TouchPad, your choice. Run the promo for a quarter or two. Advertise all over the place. Pay whatever it takes to get 30-day SIMs with data plans from mobile networks and preinstall them in the phones. Preload them with Angry Birds. Make sure that anyone buying an HP PC will get this cute little gizmo that works and does all sorts of neat stuff out-of-the-box. The PCs should also change a bit. The TouchPad and webOS phones can sync webpages with each other just by dint of being in close proximity; the PC should be able to play the same game. Encourage people who might not otherwise be interested in the tablet or the smartphone to experiment with them.

Not everybody will care about their free phone or free tablet—that's a given. So those folks could give it to their kids, friends, or neighbors. Some devices would no doubt end up languishing in drawers or attics. But plenty of them are going to get used.

No doubt about it, this will cost a big chunk of money. But writing down 250,000 unsold TouchPads also costs a big chunk of money. Buying Palm for $1 billion and then doing nothing with its really neat technology costs a big chunk of money. Your share price dropping 20 percent after you announce the plans to kill webOS hardware and sell off your PC division isn't exactly great financial news either.

And there's still no guarantee of success. Perhaps everyone would try webOS and hate it. Perhaps developers would ignore several million new webOS users, leaving it still desperately in need of applications.

But if they liked it? HP would have had a thriving ecosystem on its hands. Millions of people trying webOS, liking it, recommending it to their friends and family. A development framework that millions of developers already know and understand. An app store with customers in abundance. HP would have been well on its way to smartphone success.

If HP had primed the pump only to find that success still didn't flow, then sure, kill it off, because plainly it's never going to make it. HP, however, never even gave webOS a fighting chance. This wasn't a great big spectacular failure from a company that tried hard, gave it its all, but still couldn't succeed. It was half-hearted capitulation. That's a missed opportunity, if ever there was one.