I honestly think it wouldn't have worked. webOS is great (Tizen is great too), but smartphone OS (unlike TV OS) needs developer adoption. webOS didn't try, but Tizen tried, pretty hard (okay, they could have done it better, but oh they tried), and completely failed.
Didn't work for Palm or HP and people complained like crazy about how there "wasn't even a native app framework" and "the apps are just web pages."
I loved WebOS and had all the Palm WebOS phones, but things quickly became a two horse race. I only grudgingly switched after I came to work at Google and they gave us a free Nexus phone as a christmas present one year, and even then I missed my Palm. Android did at least improve once Google hired Mattias Duarte from Palm/HP and he took over UX on it.
I suspect for WebOS to have a decent crack at it they would have eventually had to roll out an Android emulation layer. Developers have a tough enough time supporting iOS and Android.
