"We knew HP was having trouble selling webOS devices, and as part of their quarterly fiscal announcement, they announced that they plan to discountinue operations for webOS devices, to include the TouchPad and webOS phones.In the press release sent out this afternoon, HP confirmed that they were in discussions for an acquisition of Autonomy and announced preliminary results for Q3 2011, with revenue up to $31.2 billion in comparison to $30.7 billion this time last year.But this is PreCentral - we don't care about any of that, and we're pretty sure you don't care either. Needless to say, our minds are completely blown by this news. HP didn't give any reason in their press release for the shut down (we've reached out for comment and will update if/when we get it).So what does this mean? The statement was carefully worded to state that they're "discontinuing operations for webOs devices," not webOS as an operating system. If anything, this should add fuel to the second option we discussed earlier today when the shocking word of an HP breakup first surfaced: HP is more interested in webOS than devices. They tried to give it a go with hardware, but quickly realized that they weren't going to be able to make it work without massive long-term investment and commitment. So less than a year after acquiring all of Palm for $1.2 billion, we're looking at a hazy future for webOS.Today it became approximately one thousand times harder to recommend anybody buy a TouchPad or Veer or Pre3. The entire ecosystem is in doubt. Now it's pretty clear why HP has had trouble telling us when or where the Pre3 might actually be available. There's the possibility that maybe someday some other mobile device manufacturer might pick up webOS and use it on their handsets, but if/when that happens is anybody's guess."(full press release here)