I wondered what scared HP so much?

wilderf · 08/21/2011, 07:03 PM

I wonder why only after ~50 days on the market, they dropped a whole line of products?

Did HP just discover that another manufacturer is coming out with a new tablet that is going to make all other tablet's obsolete in one day?

transient · 08/21/2011, 07:06 PM

I hate Gruber with a passion but I think he got this right:

Daring Fireball: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm and Is Getting Out of the PC Business

cashmonee · 08/21/2011, 07:16 PM

Leo Apotheker. He clearly has a path for the company that more closely follows IBM than Apple. Palm was bought before he became CEO, and most likely he wants to jettison all hardware manufacturing and become a software/services company.

No matter how bad the WebOS devices were selling, I see little reason to shut them down so abruptly. I mean as much as I like my new Touchpad, it does have a lot of problems and is very far from seriously competing with the iPad, but it does have a ton of potential. Probably more tablet potential than Android at this point. I just think hp wants out of the consumer business.

**EDIT** I swear I didn't read Gruber's post before I wrote that! LOL! He is right on though.

Dic Doc · 08/21/2011, 07:37 PM

This may make the most sense. I was wondering if behind the scenes developers were refusing to make apps, and HP thought they would never get a competitive product without apps. But the Developer Relations team and the WebOS Meet-Ups seemed to be making headway. So maybe this is all business structuring. Leo couldn't shut down WebOS until he proved that it wouldn't sell (and by proved, I mean with a lackluster attempt to sell it in the first place just so he could say "I told you so")

mike_nova · 08/21/2011, 07:48 PM

I thought that maybe there was a major flaw in hardware design that maybe even the majority of the public isn't aware of? Obviously people were talking about the hardware not being as cuttin edge, but is there something more?

Libb · 08/21/2011, 07:50 PM

If Mark Hurd didn't like dining with escorts and expensing it, webOS would still be alive.

donjt81 · 08/21/2011, 08:17 PM

Yes they realized they have no chance going against apple in the tablet or the smartphone market. But then again they knew that going in. Don't know what these clowns were thinking.

JJCook · 08/21/2011, 08:19 PM

$$$$$$$

samab · 08/21/2011, 08:31 PM

You have 4 mobile platforms that are controlled by their founders. It's a war of attrition that rational people don't want to get into --- and HP realized that now. Who is going to listen to shareholders first? It ain't these 4 companies. It is going to be HP that has to listen to their shareholders first.

Rational people don't want to get into this Mexican standoff in the first place. You have Steve Jobs the God, Bill Gates the Devil, the 2 Google kids who need adult supervision, and the RIM dynamic duo who would throw a hissy fit at a monent's notice. Then you have Steve Ballmer who literally would throw the chair at you.

Google, Microsoft and Apple have the money and the founders have enough shares to literally lose billions of dollars in a bet. The two RIM guys don't have that kind of money but they are still the largest shareholders at RIM --- and will kill their baby before they surrender. And the RIM duo probably would have enough lobbying power to lobby the Canadian government to prevent any takeover of RIM by a foreign company. Would rational people want to get in the middle of this?

dcbo89 · 08/21/2011, 09:04 PM

HPs just a bunch of cowards, spending 10 Billion on a company for enterprise instead of WebOS. Imagine what WebOS could be like with that money invested in it. Imagine what WebOS could have been like if theyd just decided to do this as a "sale" instead of a clearance. WebOS and the touchpad would easily be number 2 in the tablets miles ahead of anything android.

Titan078 · 08/21/2011, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by transient

I hate Gruber with a passion but I think he got this right:

Daring Fireball: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm and Is Getting Out of the PC Business

I had the same thoughts

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-palm...-hp-story.html

I think the board booted Hurd though and they are the ones that wanted out of the PC business. They picked Leo and Ousted Hurd.

wynand32 · 08/21/2011, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcbo89

HPs just a bunch of cowards, spending 10 Billion on a company for enterprise instead of WebOS. Imagine what WebOS could be like with that money invested in it. Imagine what WebOS could have been like if theyd just decided to do this as a "sale" instead of a clearance. WebOS and the touchpad would easily be number 2 in the tablets miles ahead of anything android.

They're losing hundreds of dollars on each TouchPad selling them this way, and took a $100 million charge to do it. Why can't people understand that this is a losing proposition? It seems like common sense that you can't sell products at a loss and stay in business very long.

The TouchPad wasn't selling at $399. Period. It's that simple. Pretty much ANY product will sell if you let them go for 1/4 the price or less. I'm sure that HP looked at the market, saw the kind of margins they can expect (and they're clearly not the kinds of margins Apple gets), and decided it simply wasn't worth the investment.

And you know what? Maybe they handled the decision poorly, but in all likelihood it was the RIGHT decision. They're not spending $10 billion on Autonomy to get into a market with razor-thin margins (for them) on the off chance that they can defeat two largely entrenched market leaders. They're spending that money to get into high-margin services businesses where they stand a good chance of success.

Hate them for screwing up the Palm acquisition. But, this decision is probably the best one they could make today.

barrysanders20 · 08/21/2011, 10:11 PM

What scared them are the iPhone 5, Ipad 3, WP7 Mango, and the Nexus Prime.

liv4rc51 · 08/21/2011, 10:31 PM

What they should have done IMO, is sell the TP for cost or less. That would have put a boat load of WebOS devices out in the field, thus creating a buzz. Hmm this idea sounds a lot like reality. Anyway, the buzz may or may not have done them any good, but it would have been a better attempt @ making things work. I paid 550 for mine and obviously saw a value there, but I am a WebOS fan. I Nearly start and end a conversation with the word WebOS. Lol

claudio · 08/21/2011, 11:33 PM

One of the other forums has a link to an alleged HP hardware engineer who claims that news of HP's breakup was leaked to Bloomberg last week, and that the breakup wasn't supposed to happen for months, but once it was leaked they had to do it right away.

This makes sense as an HP internal memo was leaked to Bloomberg in May, and would also explain the obvious internal chaos at HP last week. What's sad is that the alleged leaker may end up being the person who killed WebOS. With a few more months of optimization the OS may become competitive, and desirable enough that it could have been licensed by PSG to folks like Samsung or HTC.

08/21/2011, 07:03 PM	#1 (permalink)
wilderf Member Join Date: Jan 2000 Location: Reading, PA Posts: 255 Likes Received: 2 Thanks: 15 Thanked 26 Times in 23 Posts	I wondered what scared HP so much? I wonder why only after ~50 days on the market, they dropped a whole line of products? Did HP just discover that another manufacturer is coming out with a new tablet that is going to make all other tablet's obsolete in one day?
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 07:06 PM	#2 (permalink)
transient Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 33 Likes Received: 7 Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post	I hate Gruber with a passion but I think he got this right: Daring Fireball: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm and Is Getting Out of the PC Business
	Liked by Titan078 likes this.

08/21/2011, 07:16 PM	#3 (permalink)
cashmonee Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 54 Likes Received: 15 Thanks: 1 Thanked 10 Times in 7 Posts	Leo Apotheker. He clearly has a path for the company that more closely follows IBM than Apple. Palm was bought before he became CEO, and most likely he wants to jettison all hardware manufacturing and become a software/services company. No matter how bad the WebOS devices were selling, I see little reason to shut them down so abruptly. I mean as much as I like my new Touchpad, it does have a lot of problems and is very far from seriously competing with the iPad, but it does have a ton of potential. Probably more tablet potential than Android at this point. I just think hp wants out of the consumer business. EDIT I swear I didn't read Gruber's post before I wrote that! LOL! He is right on though.
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 07:37 PM	#4 (permalink)
Dic Doc Member Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 50 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 23 Thanked 10 Times in 6 Posts	This may make the most sense. I was wondering if behind the scenes developers were refusing to make apps, and HP thought they would never get a competitive product without apps. But the Developer Relations team and the WebOS Meet-Ups seemed to be making headway. So maybe this is all business structuring. Leo couldn't shut down WebOS until he proved that it wouldn't sell (and by proved, I mean with a lackluster attempt to sell it in the first place just so he could say "I told you so")
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 07:48 PM	#5 (permalink)
mike_nova Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Baltimore, MD Posts: 12 Likes Received: 1 Thanks: 5 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	I thought that maybe there was a major flaw in hardware design that maybe even the majority of the public isn't aware of? Obviously people were talking about the hardware not being as cuttin edge, but is there something more?
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 07:50 PM	#6 (permalink)
Libb Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 187 Likes Received: 3 Thanks: 10 Thanked 25 Times in 14 Posts	If Mark Hurd didn't like dining with escorts and expensing it, webOS would still be alive.
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 08:17 PM	#7 (permalink)
donjt81 Member Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 55 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 5 Thanked 6 Times in 5 Posts	Yes they realized they have no chance going against apple in the tablet or the smartphone market. But then again they knew that going in. Don't know what these clowns were thinking.
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 08:19 PM	#8 (permalink)
JJCook Member Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 182 Likes Received: 4 Thanks: 1 Thanked 4 Times in 3 Posts	$$$$$$$
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 08:31 PM	#9 (permalink)
samab Member Join Date: Feb 2011 Posts: 700 Likes Received: 23 Thanks: 0 Thanked 52 Times in 47 Posts	You have 4 mobile platforms that are controlled by their founders. It's a war of attrition that rational people don't want to get into --- and HP realized that now. Who is going to listen to shareholders first? It ain't these 4 companies. It is going to be HP that has to listen to their shareholders first. Rational people don't want to get into this Mexican standoff in the first place. You have Steve Jobs the God, Bill Gates the Devil, the 2 Google kids who need adult supervision, and the RIM dynamic duo who would throw a hissy fit at a monent's notice. Then you have Steve Ballmer who literally would throw the chair at you. Google, Microsoft and Apple have the money and the founders have enough shares to literally lose billions of dollars in a bet. The two RIM guys don't have that kind of money but they are still the largest shareholders at RIM --- and will kill their baby before they surrender. And the RIM duo probably would have enough lobbying power to lobby the Canadian government to prevent any takeover of RIM by a foreign company. Would rational people want to get in the middle of this?
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 09:04 PM	#10 (permalink)
dcbo89 Member Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 428 Likes Received: 26 Thanks: 4 Thanked 26 Times in 19 Posts	HPs just a bunch of cowards, spending 10 Billion on a company for enterprise instead of WebOS. Imagine what WebOS could be like with that money invested in it. Imagine what WebOS could have been like if theyd just decided to do this as a "sale" instead of a clearance. WebOS and the touchpad would easily be number 2 in the tablets miles ahead of anything android. __________________ Proud Canadian owner of Palm Pre- WebOS 2.1 Sept 2009 HP Touchpad WebOS 3.0 July 2011 Palm Pre3 AT&T October 2011
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 10:11 PM	#13 (permalink)
barrysanders20 Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 519 Likes Received: 34 Thanks: 0 Thanked 52 Times in 36 Posts	What scared them are the iPhone 5, Ipad 3, WP7 Mango, and the Nexus Prime.
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 10:31 PM	#14 (permalink)
liv4rc51 Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Indiana Posts: 137 Likes Received: 10 Thanks: 12 Thanked 19 Times in 13 Posts	What they should have done IMO, is sell the TP for cost or less. That would have put a boat load of WebOS devices out in the field, thus creating a buzz. Hmm this idea sounds a lot like reality. Anyway, the buzz may or may not have done them any good, but it would have been a better attempt @ making things work. I paid 550 for mine and obviously saw a value there, but I am a WebOS fan. I Nearly start and end a conversation with the word WebOS. Lol __________________ I was a proud supporter of Palm, HP WebOS running on the Palm Pre, Pixi, and now the TouchPad. Amazon =
	Liked by

08/21/2011, 11:33 PM	#15 (permalink)
claudio Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 5 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	One of the other forums has a link to an alleged HP hardware engineer who claims that news of HP's breakup was leaked to Bloomberg last week, and that the breakup wasn't supposed to happen for months, but once it was leaked they had to do it right away. This makes sense as an HP internal memo was leaked to Bloomberg in May, and would also explain the obvious internal chaos at HP last week. What's sad is that the alleged leaker may end up being the person who killed WebOS. With a few more months of optimization the OS may become competitive, and desirable enough that it could have been licensed by PSG to folks like Samsung or HTC.
	Liked by

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