Ever since the death of WebOS, fanboys have been wondering what was going to happen to their beloved mobile operating system. Their first ray of sunshine came from a project called “Open WebOS”. This was great and all until it was announced that none of the current WebOS hardware would be supported. Fanboys went back to installing Android on their Touchpads and hoping that one day WebOS would be resurrected from the dead. Well today is that day folks. HP sent around a flyer to their employees about Gram. The flyer describes Gram as “Potent. Light. Nimble. At the core of all things big and small”. This could suggest that Gram will be used on phones (small) and tablets (big). Although, it doesn’t look as if Gram (or HP for that matter) will be producing the hardware. Gram describes itself strictly as a software company, and it appears that HP will be making Windows 8 tablets (which hopefully will be better than the TouchPad). That leads us to ask, who is going to manufacture phones for Gram?
Photo from Web OS Nation
Gram also sent out an email to WebOS employees. Web OS Nation managed to get their hands on a copy of it.
Hi everyone,
Thank you for all of your enthusiasm at yesterday’s new brand announcement: GRAM. We hope you will fall in love with the brand just as lots of us have already.
Please note that our Mission, Values and Plan of Action are the same. We are continuing to march forward on our timelines as usual—nothing new there.
We have much work to do, and, again, I solicit your help.
Yes, this is a new brand—it is just the beginning, and there is so much more to do. And yet unveiling the new brand is also a Call to Action:
Try it on. We don’t expect you to love it overnight. We are no longer a consumer hardware brand, we are a different company with focus on software, User Experience, Cloud, engineering and partnering. This change in identity will take some getting used to and that’s normal.
Stealth mode. We are an incubation company, and we are trusting you to keep this company name and product under the radar to give it time to take root and grow. You can wear the logo, help build the momentum of the new identity, talk to your families and friends about it. If someone from the outside asks, you can say, “GRAM is a new company. We are in stealth mode on our product offering.”
Tap your network. Help us hire the best and the brightest, refer your friends and help us in our shared purpose as we continue our rise to the top. You can use the name to help us to recruit.
Be the culture. Spread our Values: People Matter. Integrity and Trust. Deliberate Innovation. Act small, deliver big.
For those of you who could not attend yesterday’s unveiling – we really missed you. Please be on the lookout for the gift bags with our new cool branded items, which we be mailing out to you this and next week. All of you should get one, if not – let me know.
Best
Martin
Gram is going to have to do a lot in order to solidify themselves as a contender to iOS and Android. It has taken Microsoft years in order to control a small percent of mobile computing and lets face it, Blackberry is done. Gram will also have to contend with the newcomer Mozilla who is developing Firefox OS. I wish Gram the best of luck and I hope that they create something amazing!
Have any thoughts about Gram? Sound off in the comments.
The Boardman Perspective 