How?
How can the future of WebOS be bright when there are currently no supported devices for developers to write apps for? How can you say that PCs will run WebOS in the future when you are looking at selling off that division? Who in there right mind is going to continue to or even look at writing apps for WebOS devices when there are none, you should have signed up other licensees before saying you will no longer create hardware devices as this would minimise the fallout as others would be there in the market to pick up and carry the WebOS ecosystem and developers.
I think the recent fire sale has shown that the price was the issue and the main barrier to breaking into the market. Had you sold the touchpads for 200 dollars less or the equivalent in each market and made a small loss on each device in order to earn a small commission on each app sold you may have come out ahead, as making a loss on each PS3 seems to be working for Sony. At the very least you would minimise the losses from each device that you have sold for half the cost it takes to make them, added hundreds of thousands of touchpad and WebOS users which would excite thousands of developers (having my app be one of three hundred available is better than being one of three hundred thousand) and if you still wanted to get rid of the hardware you could show prospective licensees that you have a captive market that is ready to consume cloud services and new apps, show that growth is still easily achievable making the purchase of WebOS more profitable and expected on WebOS and not have shot yourself in the foot.
Quite frankly that is just bad business by short sighted 'businessmen' that think they are untouchable due to the size of the company they work at.
Had I been a shareholder I would be incredibly pissed off that my money had been wasted and at the very least if selling off the hardware division was the way forward I would be extremely annoyed that everything above had not been completed in order to secure the best price for an asset that I had developed