[Andrew Hunt]

So last night I was doing some thinking and research about HP during the Leo Apotheker era and I decided to do some math (what is wrong with me!? ) Let's assume that all of the Touchpads sold were 16GB models. Of course that was not the case, but I could not find an exact number of how much of each model was sold. The 16GB model sold for $499.99. It was estimated that the Touchpad had about $296.15 worth of components inside with a $10 cost to assemble. This brings the total to about $306.15. Let's say there was about $100 added to that cost for other things (taxes, shipping...) which would bring the total to $406.15. The Touchpad sold for $499.99, and subtracting this number with the approximate cost of each Touchpad would mean that HP made about $93.84 per Touchpad. HP sold 25,000 Touchpads initially, and Harvey Norman sold 1200. If we multiply the cost HP made per Touchpad to the amount sold, that would mean HP made $2,458,608 initially. Let's say that 10% of this money was research and development costs. This would leave HP with $2,212,747.20 initially made on the Touchpad. It was estimated that HP sold about 903,354 Touchpads in total. With the price drop to $99 for the 16GB model, HP sold about 877,154 Touchpads during the fire sale. Let's take the $406.15 for the cost per Touchpad and subtract $99. HP lost $307.15 per Touchpad. If we multiply the amount lost by the amount sold, HP totally lost $269,417,851.10 during the fire sale. If we add the amount made and the amount lost, HP totally lost $267,205,103.90 approximately due to the Touchpad fire sale. Please feel free to correct my math if it needs it.

[TJs11thPre]

That's a lot of math with mostly speculative data.

But if you're adding up losses for HP, be sure to include how much money they may have well just set on fire, but instead paid to Leo A in his golden parachute. I bet it's more than they lost on tablets.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough to bankrupt them. I hate the company and always will now. I buy Canon printers now. Add that to their losses as well.

[GoJoe2]

Sounds all quite well. But I think that the 296.15 might be a bit high.
First, it doesn't make sense from a merchant standpoint. Wholesalers and shops add usually a markup of about 15 zu 25 % depending of product type. This alone would indicate to a much lower production cost.
And secondly, HP bought lot of the relevant parts, I mean really really lots. So they would not pay the normal retail price for the components (I don’t know if that is already considered in the 296).

I would say that producing costs of each unit might have been closer to $ 200. Everything else would make (for me as a manufacturer) not much sense: For instance advertising campaigns, which cost millions or some licensing agreements or agreements with carriers which might add costs or similar positions.

Nevertheless, even if it cost them $ 150 or so, they lost many many millions, roughly half of what you estimated (not considering ancillary cost necessary to keep cloud services and the like running after the last unit had been sold).

[namgod]

Not near as much as they lost on Autonomy.

From the Money Pit: Do you realize what you've done? You've taken
a woman who loves you...One of the great women
on the face of this Earth and thrown her away.
I've lost her too, but I'll get over it
because I am shallow and self-centred.
But you, you won't
because you are complex.
You will suffer terrible anguish
for the rest of your life.

[evacaf]

I hope they lost more than we can ever imagine. Then I hope they lost even more. I will never buy an HP product again; so they lost those sells (and I know I am not alone).

I wonder what company Leo is ruining now...?

[mazzinia]

Well, anyway there are other numbers to be added:

- Palm was bought for x
- What was left after all this mess was eventually sold for y
- Patents ?

I think there's a decently big loss there, exceeding whatever loss they had with the firesale (ah, keep in mind they lost a lot on the phones, too)

This said, anyone happens to have the phone number of Leo ? I do have a nice fountain in Rome that I'm sure he would love to buy

[Preemptive]

I wonder what company Leo is ruining now...?

Apotheker currently sits on the board of Schneider Electric SA, Steria, and PlaNet Finance - a non-profit organization. - Wikipedia

Maybe I'll get flamed for this, but it's interesting to note that HP is now doing many of the things Leo planned. From a business perspective, he may well have been right. He perhaps isn't a terrible businessman, though the execution at HP was clearly botched.

IBM was a hardware company that became a business/services software company. Coming from that background, Leo seemed to want to follow the same path and move from commodified, low-margin consumer H/W. HP used to be famed for it's hardware - never heard much positive about software.

It's interesting to compare MS strategy with the struggling windowsphone - long term investment and Windows 10 across devices (remember when HP planned to have webOS on everything?). MS are in mobile because they have to retain a foothold in the space as part of the broader plan. MS is a software company that now also produces hardware (mainly to support it's software)

[Andrew Hunt]

I tried more to focus on just the Touchpad loss alone and not so much anything else. Palm was bought for about $1.2 billion. HP stock dropped 40% during Apotheker era (I think it was about $36 something a share before the drop) 25% was after the cancellation of webOS (to about $20ish or less). Apotheker received over $13 million in compensation: a severance payment of $7.2 million, shares worth $3.56 million, and a performance bonus of $2.4 million. The company lost more than $30 billion in market capitalization during his tenure. So yes the loss was much greater than I calculated, but I was not focused on total loss of HP, just the Touchpad. I am probably going to get slapped for this, but I do not hate HP, just the person in charge of HP from 1 November 2010 to 22 September 2011. I have too many HP products in my house, and an HP ad below the thread.

[mazzinia]

Well, obviously the company is itself a victim, and so the normal employees that got involved and lost their jobs. The board and the board alone is behind all the troubles, that started around 1999/2000 with La Carly and her love for private jets...

[TJs11thPre]

I hate the world of private jets!

[Andrew Hunt]

I assume La Carly bought a few private jets? I think the board needs to rethink how it runs the company.

[mazzinia]

I "think' she had 3 at her disposal

[Andrew Hunt]

Well, isn't she the smartest when it comes to money

[TopTongueBarry]

Well, isn't she the smartest when it comes to money

You do realize that she is running for President, don't you?

Say goodbye to the middle class and to any hope of an economic recovery if she happens to get elected.

[Andrew Hunt]

You do realize that she is running for President, don't you?

Say goodbye to the middle class and to any hope of an economic recovery if she happens to get elected.

Not involved in politics, but I am very scared now.

[Andrew Hunt]

I wondered how much they would have lost if they continued with webOS? Look at windows phone still struggling after all these years and it is a much better designed OS while webOS was rushed. I am not sure why HP bought Palm, it was such a bad investment.

I don't know, but at first it would have been a lot. However, if HP had the motivation to make it bigger, they could have.

[eblade]

Don't forget about all of those Go's that went completely uncomped.

[Andrew Hunt]

I think the Go could have kept webOS relevant for enough time to make an actual competitor in the tablet market. Not to say that the Touchpad isn't a great tablet though.

[Andrew Hunt]

The GO was unbelievably close to launching too.....

HP could have easily launched it... Such bad business practices back in 2011...

[inspire_tek]

The GO was unbelievably close to launching too..... otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to get one myself.

I wonder how many GO made it through production before it was shutdown. I would assume that number would be pretty high since it would have ramped up fairly quickly