HP lost its way - a look back...

[MDsmartphone]

Stupid HP.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/08/500-hp-apotheker/

[Peppy431]

This lengthy article details the dysfunctional management at HP.
How Hewlett-Packard lost its way - Fortune Tech
Léo Apotheker's disastrous tenure as HP's CEO revealed a dysfunctional company struggling for direction after a decade of missteps and scandals. Can his replacement, Meg Whitman, fix the tech giant?

It's difficult to imagine anyone fixing it as long as Ray Lane has control of the board. After reading the article I'm less confident that HP will do the right thing even with an open sourced WebOS. It's a shame WebOS ended up in their hands.

[woosh#WN]

Compelling and rich! From the barbed wire surrounding HP's gated executive parking lot , to Leo's paranoid world view.

[C-Note]

Originally Posted by MDsmartphone

Stupid HP.

How Hewlett-Packard lost its way - Fortune Tech

Stunning that people with that much responsibility and supposedly smarts could be so petty... webOS didn't have a chance in that environment. Neither did anything else.

Wonder how the Autonomy deal will do after the easy money coming in from their existing business expires. Always got to be suspicious of a company that tries to cut their way to profitability. It never has worked, it just stops the bleeding and look good on a quarterly accounting sheet - but not for too many quarters.

[HelloNNNewman]

Wow.. thanks for posting this. Such a sad read about the behind-the-scenes personal politics. This could be made into a movie parody like they did with the tobacco industry.

[geekpeter]

interesting read, pretty shocked at some of the drama and stupidity the story highlights.

[sledge007]

<threads merged>

[quiestbml]

Phenomenal article!

[MDsmartphone]

Made it to precentral's...er....webOSnation's front page.

I've tweeted this to as many tech sites and bloggers and former palm employees as I can too. The ridiculousness of this company needs to be known.

Thanks to our old friend Jonathon ezor for the link

[bluenote]

lesjak is seen as sober and steady and whitman looks like she is getting back to business, time will tell if they can turn this around, they seem to be back to tending to customers and looking out 3 to5 years, more longterm than the usual 1 to 2 quarters wallstreet looks at.

intel jumping into the mobile biz and now lenovo announced today it is doing so. They can't all run the security leaking android system--someone will want webOS to differentiate from the pack.

[eblade]

i see people saying that all over, that someone will want webOS to differentiate.. but, so far, everyone who has wanted to differentiate has either (A) built their own system or (b) built some launcher on top of Android. The name "webOS" is currently toxic to anyone in the financial business, and at least somewhat so in the tech business, and wholly unknown outside of those sectors.

As Intel recently said, they went with Android, because in part, HP has been silent as to what their plans are. Seems that's likely because HP is still figuring out what their plans are.

[laoh]

Very well written article. Too bad none of the HP execs could put a 10th of the effort into running the company as the writer put into this article. webOS never had a chance. It wasn't even on anyone's radar. This is not a sprint, it's a marathon? HAHAHAHAHAHA.

[xezat]

So that's how you pronounced the one guy's name...I also like how Whitman quickly quieted her audience during her "get-to-know" session.

But yeah, definitely an interesting insight into the dysfunction of HP, part of the reason I probably won't be investing in any of their stuff anymore (besides printers, they do make solid enough printers). I mean I love my TP, but it's clear to see why it wasn't better and instead left for dead.

[bluenote]

Originally Posted by eblade

i see people saying that all over, that someone will want webOS to differentiate.. but, so far, everyone who has wanted to differentiate has either (A) built their own system or (b) built some launcher on top of Android. The name "webOS" is currently toxic to anyone in the financial business, and at least somewhat so in the tech business, and wholly unknown outside of those sectors.

As Intel recently said, they went with Android, because in part, HP has been silent as to what their plans are. Seems that's likely because HP is still figuring out what their plans are.

It may make sense for HP to discuss after they have a beta at least to share, they are hiring right now so they clearly had to have had some internal plan presented to get the ok for this. I think too soon to call webos toxic topolsky tweeted recently that he has fired up his pre3 and either bloomberg or cnbc journalists recently quizzed mckinney on webos and their tone was interested, not disparaging. Even the fortune article said webos software drew interest and some problem was that touchpad hardware was last generation (although they overlook that speakers are better than ipad2 or 3, not a trivial feature for audio enjoyment)

We have jason now at HP and openwebos means that rod and group can at least see the code in order to help fix the bugs so lets see what the beta looks like. The current trend is app centric and closed, driven by apples success but equally also by the failure of anyone else to produce as much functionality in the open web at a cheaper price. But publishers at least may start following financial times in going back to the browser, as time goes on both industry and consumers may go back to the browser and also to a more open model as the market may gravitate to cheaper. It is only a matter of time and apple knows this too, they are selling refurb ipad2 now at 40% off and this product only a year old, clearly they are trying to grab users now, ahead of all the changes (which probably include msft and amazon and google new models).

All this to say, grab some popcorn and lets watch the show, should be fun.

[Vistaus]

Originally Posted by Joe_B

This lengthy article details the dysfunctional management at HP.
How Hewlett-Packard lost its way - Fortune Tech
Léo Apotheker's disastrous tenure as HP's CEO revealed a dysfunctional company struggling for direction after a decade of missteps and scandals. Can his replacement, Meg Whitman, fix the tech giant?

It's difficult to imagine anyone fixing it as long as Ray Lane has control of the board. After reading the article I'm less confident that HP will do the right thing even with an open sourced WebOS. It's a shame WebOS ended up in their hands.

What would you rather have had: Palm defunct and bye-bye webOS or HP webOS they failed to make popular? I'd go for the last one. HP made mistakes, but at least we didn't have to say bye-bye to webOS.

[laoh]

Originally Posted by Vistaus

What would you rather have had: Palm defunct and bye-bye webOS or HP webOS they failed to make popular? I'd go for the last one. HP made mistakes, but at least we didn't have to say bye-bye to webOS.

Well, Palm wouldn't have just closed shop and disappear from earth. They would've put themselves up for sale and some company would've taken over running webOS... oh wait...

[MDsmartphone]

I would have preferred palm stick it out and choose a better buyer if there was an option or open source it themselves.

HP is a joke. I know many big organizations run this way. But at the end of the day if the consumer suffers as a result, as all webOS fans did, its a big negative against the company.

I for one plan on never buying another HP consumer product.

[gbp]

Originally Posted by MDsmartphone

I would have preferred palm stick it out and choose a better buyer if there was an option or open source it themselves.

HP is a joke. I know many big organizations run this way. But at the end of the day if the consumer suffers as a result, as all webOS fans did, its a big negative against the company.

I for one plan on never buying another HP consumer product.

I agree, HP choice was bad. Why ? because they were not in it to begin with. Sony is the best bet. They can use it across all their gadgets, TVs, the browser can be put on PS3 and they can merge their playstation store with palm catalog. There are many things that go right with Sony buying Palm. Most importantly Sony is still one of the top dog in hardware business. With webOS they could have competed with Android phones better than they are doing today.

[geekpeter]

Originally Posted by gbp

I agree, HP choice was bad. Why ? because they were not in it to begin with. Sony is the best bet. They can use it across all their gadgets, TVs, the browser can be put on PS3 and they can merge their playstation store with palm catalog. There are many things that go right with Sony buying Palm. Most importantly Sony is still one of the top dog in hardware business. With webOS they could have competed with Android phones better than they are doing today.

sony is a massive supporter of the closed ecosystem same as apple, theres no way webOS would have remained a user friendly patchable free to play with/open system had sony or similar aquired it.

[MDsmartphone]

Sony or not...HP was not the answer