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A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

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Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#11

Autonomy is nothing like SAP. What a ridiculous, empty post.

For the purpose of the comparison (to show that Autonomy is far from the consumer market and close to the enterprise market) I would say they're close enough. Enterprise search and knowledge management applications are no less far from the consumer space than SAP.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#13
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the quotes that were gathered from HP's PR, it sounds like they weren't at all confident in the TouchPad's ability to turn profits in the coming years. Assuming they didn't withhold a bunch of evidence that led them to that opinion, they'd surely have had a tough time finding a buyer. It also doesn't inspire a lot of confidence if you're trying to spin off a product division after giving it only 49 days on the m…

At a good enough price I'm sure they would have found a buyer. They got zero dollars for it now, so any sale prices seems better than what they did. And if patents were the problem they could have required a cross licensing agreement with any buyer as a condition of sale.

They can still sell off the patents.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#14
post #8

WebOS was for Hurd just a fig leaf to make a future orientated impression, in reality were all the profits he made short term. What HP needs now is focus and that is what Apotheker is doing. Some people are disappointed that it is not consumer orientated, but when you look at the "smart phone wars" this seems reasonable to me. HP can't compete with Google, Apple and Microsoft there. Look at Nokia and Blackberry.

> What HP needs now is focus and that is what Apotheker is doing.

Yes and no. Focusing would be to reduce the surface of the corporation to its core business, basically what Jobs did when he got back to Apple.

What Apotheker is doing is to change HP's business altogether.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#16
post #3

I tend to agree with the basic reasoning but there's one thing I don't understand. Why cancel the TouchPad? Why not just spin that out with the hardware business to Compaq (which is the idea, yes?)? It seems they've devalued that unit by killing WebOS. All PC makers are on razor thin margins... apart from Apple. A post from yesterday [1] painted an interesting picture where Dell, through a series of seemingly rationa…

Wouldn't that require them to come up with a valuation for the WebOS business? And right now, wouldn't that valuation look very bad for HP? The spot price for the WebOS business is much lower than what HP paid for it. Why not delay and diffuse the reckoning?

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#17
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the quotes that were gathered from HP's PR, it sounds like they weren't at all confident in the TouchPad's ability to turn profits in the coming years. Assuming they didn't withhold a bunch of evidence that led them to that opinion, they'd surely have had a tough time finding a buyer. It also doesn't inspire a lot of confidence if you're trying to spin off a product division after giving it only 49 days on the m…

At a good enough price I'm sure they would have found a buyer. They got zero dollars for it now, so any sale prices seems better than what they did. And if patents were the problem they could have required a cross licensing agreement with any buyer as a condition of sale.

INAA, but in many cases you do better to shutter something and write it down than to sell it for a pittance.

Let’s say it’s bleeding money. Keeping the lights on while you find a buyer costs money, and buyers are no fools: If you can’t find two buyers to bid against each other, the one buyer you find has you over a barrel: Every day they delay in negotiations with you costs you money, so you are under tremendous pressure to conclude a deal at their price with their terms.

I have no idea what’s going on with HP, but its not unreasonable to close something quickly if you don’t have a buyer or buyers already lined up to do a deal. I suspect that if HP had received feelers from a possible buyer, they would already have tried to sell Palm. Closing it means that they either don’t have any serious buyers or have already tried to sell and discovered that it’s cheaper to close it and keep the patents.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#18

Autonomy is nothing like SAP. What a ridiculous, empty post.

They are both enterprise software companies. It looks like Autonomy focuses on data analysis while SAP focuses on business development. Regardless, Autonomy is much much much more like SAP than it is like a consumer electronics company. The point is a good one.
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