[rnld]

:Yawn:

There has NEVER been a frenzy for any WebOS product in the history of the world like there has for the TP. You seem to keep discounting that. You chalk it up to merely $99 firesale owners. You yourself appear to dislike the platform more than anyone, yet you are still here arguing about it...

I like WebOS. Don't get so defensive. If the Blackberry tablet went on sale for $99 the frenzy would be the same.

We are talking about what makes business sense for HP, not owners defending their $99 purchases.

You may want to try and be objective.

[LizardWiz]

Yes, we are talking about what makes business sense for HP.
They spent 1.2 billion acquiring it.
They spent I would guess a billion killing it.
Yet, they are apparently trying to get some value out of the investment.

Here's what makes sense, if you're trying to elicit value. The OS is worthless to try to sell with no hardware, they killed that ship. Noone is going to wait a year, it's over, nobody will care about WebOS at that point. So if you are going to try and elicit value from it, you should consider continuing your production, and the timing just happens to be right for the ecosystem to develop and userbase to flourish.

[sweaner]

What kind of business sense cancels a product in 2 months, after all of the development costs? How do you think a 32 GB Touchpad with an included Touchstone and 50 GB online storage would have sold initially? I bet it would have sold well.

[rnld]

What kind of business sense cancels a product in 2 months, after all of the development costs? How do you think a 32 GB Touchpad with an included Touchstone and 50 GB online storage would have sold initially? I bet it would have sold well.

You are basing this on what?

[rnld]

Yes, we are talking about what makes business sense for HP.
They spent 1.2 billion acquiring it.
They spent I would guess a billion killing it.
Yet, they are apparently trying to get some value out of the investment.

Here's what makes sense, if you're trying to elicit value. The OS is worthless to try to sell with no hardware, they killed that ship. Noone is going to wait a year, it's over, nobody will care about WebOS at that point. So if you are going to try and elicit value from it, you should consider continuing your production, and the timing just happens to be right for the ecosystem to develop and userbase to flourish.

The harsh reality is that there is no value in a big money loser. They need to cut their losses.

There is no reason to believe they have a meaningful user base just because it sold out at fire sale prices.

That's like saying they should reopen Borders because they sold everything at the liquidation sales. Borders did not build a loyal shopper, just people looking for a great deal.

[LizardWiz]

No it's not. Printed literature is a dying platform, just like hard pressed music, and soon to be movies as well.

Tablets are at the very early stages of their development and there is no reason to assume that it will not be huge.

So there IS value in losing money to become a key player in a market at it's early stages dominated by a SINGLE player. And they will certainly lose at a mucher slower rate than they have been bleeding money on the product, all they need is right price point. So far we know:
$99 is too low
$600 is too high
$250-300 seems to be the going rate now on amazon and ebay

[rnld]

The tablet market belongs to Apple. If a new one is going to get into their market it has to offer something that the iPad doesn't have. Next, it has to be better than Android.

HP and the Touchpad are so behind the curve, it stiffed.

[Aware]

maybe HP knows more about Windows 8 than we do. Windows 8 and Windows Phone ++ Windows tablet stand to be an awesome ecosystem if Microsoft-and hardware vendors pull it off.

maybe HP figured it was better off abandoning hardware rather than fighting the inevitable or retooling to join the party.

like most here, I have been swayed by the TouchPad but I'm more interested in what the Windows ecosystem might become.

[dabombcra]

The tablet market belongs to Apple. If a new one is going to get into their market it has to offer something that the iPad doesn't have. Next, it has to be better than Android.

HP and the Touchpad are so behind the curve, it stiffed.

HP was not in the market to compete with Apple. In my opinion, webOS is the Best OS on the market. Again that is my opinion. The multi-tasking, card stacks & UI are not like the others. Android & Apple are to simular.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums

[LizardWiz]

The tablet market belongs to Apple. If a new one is going to get into their market it has to offer something that the iPad doesn't have. Next, it has to be better than Android.

HP and the Touchpad are so behind the curve, it stiffed.

OK.
Things change pretty quickly. The tablet market will be dominated by Apple for a very short time from this point forward.
The smartphone market was dominated by them very briefly as well.

Now is when you get into the market, when it is dominated by a single competitor who charges outrageously high prices, and it is at the very beginning of product maturation...

[k4ever]

Whitman was one of the board, so why would she want to change a plan she agreed to in the first place?

I think this is an issue of communication not strategy - Whitman is seen as a better person to communicate what they have already agreed to do not make significant changes to that plan.

Then the board are bigger idiots than we thought. It wasn't the way Leo communicated the plan. While I agree his methods were horrible, I think the real problem was the plan itself. It totally went against what HP was telling its investors as late as the beginning of August. No one wants to see the PSG get split off and a lot of folks are upset that HP did not execute it's webOS everywhere (to include PCs) strategy. Their current plan is horrible and not well thought out. If Whitman continues to execute that plan HP will lose more investors. The drop in stock prices wasn't Leo alone. It was Leo and the plan.


-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities

[Touchpaddle]

maybe HP knows more about Windows 8 than we do. Windows 8 and Windows Phone ++ Windows tablet stand to be an awesome ecosystem if Microsoft-and hardware vendors pull it off.

maybe HP figured it was better off abandoning hardware rather than fighting the inevitable or retooling to join the party.

like most here, I have been swayed by the TouchPad but I'm more interested in what the Windows ecosystem might become.

I sent my CV to HP for the CEO job. Apparently I was not picked.

Had I been hired as CEO, my first order of business would be to
annouce upcoming Windows 8 tablets priced at $330. There's
no reason to hang on to webOS. I love webOS and will continue
to use it until my Touchpads die of natural causes. However, I
do not believe there's a future for webOS software and hardware.

As much as people love iPads, there are still millions potential
tablet buyers who want something that work seamlessly with
their current Window-based PCs. While Windows is hardly an
ideal OS, it still reside on the majority of cmputers sold. How
many of you are reading this on a Windows PC?

Assuming Micro$oft doesn't mess it up, like it did so many times
in the past, Windows 8 is going to have a pretty decent future.

[Daughain]

Never been fond of Windows, for an assortment of reasons. Windows8 simply seems to be doing what HP claimed they were going to do with webOS, which was my whole reason for picking up a touchpad in the first place. I will be interested in seeing how win8 develops, but don't see myself using it beyond VM under linux. What I would truly like to see would be some compatability between webOS and linux... Such is life.

[paul-c]

I totally hit Meg up on Twitter as soon as I heard about her becoming CEO of HP. Doubt it will do anything, but I thought it would be worth a shot and funny at the same time. I told her not to ruin the company any further and to bring back webOS. Then I wished her good luck because she'll need it. We'll see where this HP rollercoaster goes from here.

[rnld]

I totally hit Meg up on Twitter as soon as I heard about her becoming CEO of HP. Doubt it will do anything, but I thought it would be worth a shot and funny at the same time. I told her not to ruin the company any further and to bring back webOS. Then I wished her good luck because she'll need it. We'll see where this HP rollercoaster goes from here.

All WebOS looks like to a CEO is a huge money loser.