Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#51

Post by masklinn »

skrebbel wrote: post #21
masklinn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> What Apotheker is doing is to change HP's business altogether. No he isn't, he's reducing its scope to the most profitable and future-proof business units. HP is one of the world's biggest enterprise software business. Yes, also before they bought Autonomy. They just also make PCs and printers and the likes, which makes consumers not know any better than "HP is a PC and printer maker".

Uh... before they decided to end it, "PCs and printers and the like" made up the majority of HP's business.

HPSD is a very tiny fraction of HP: 14000 employees out of 320000 worldwide, and that's after having bought 15 companies in barely 5 years. We're talking $3.5bn revenue, out of $126bn for the whole company. HP is a very small software business, it's a big hardware and services business: HPES, formerly EDS, makes up ~$35bn of HP's revenue

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#52

Post by palish »

blinkingled wrote: post #41
acangiano wrote: post #22

I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting o…

Firing Hurd was the right thing to do - I will argue that they were late. Hurd was seen as aligning with Oracle and making decisions that did not conflict with Oracle. EDS, conveniently missed Sun acquisition, consumer focus in lieu of enterprise paints a consistent picture. There is a reason Hurd now works at Oracle and Larry did not like him getting fired. Besides show me what he did apart from cost cutting. Apothe…

Wait --- what? They fired Hurd as a direct consequence of him paying a hooker.

What's that got to do with strategy? Or are we claiming that it's "okay to lie" about why someone is being fired..?

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#54

Post by DanielN »

cwilson wrote: post #48
acangiano wrote: post #22

I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting o…

"And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities." For HP, at this time, I'm not sure I agree. Why? It's as simple as Apple is in that market as well and nothing HP (or anyone really) has done has stopped or caught up with their momentum. In fact I think it's smart for them to transition to the enterprise world entirely. We don't hear…

I would agree with your assessment. But it's not just Apple that's making life difficult for HP.

Simply put (and this has been happening for four or five years now) Assus Acer and Lenovo are eating HP's lunch on the low end and Apple is eating their lunch on the high end. All the while they are playing second fiddle to Dell ( and to an increasing extent to Assus) in between.

Additionally HP would need to play serious catch up to Apple, HTC, and in the international market Lenovo (maybe even Motorola although I don't know how that is going to work post acquisition) in mobil. And as Dell has learned, playing catch up in mobil requires throwing a lot of money down the drain without a guarantee for positive returns. (This last part about Dell is just my perception. For all I know Dell's margins on mobil have been stellar, but I don't think that's the case)

I understand the market's reaction to HP's pivote, although I think a lot of it is panic and hedging bets and some bad timing on HP's part, but that is what markets are suppose to do. I don't so much understand the tech industry's reaction to the move.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#55

Post by ugh »

ansy wrote: post #35
cletus wrote: 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…

The TouchPad is a real disaster. 10% sell rate even after promotions? This is like ET for the Atari 2600. Best Buy was ready to just send back 245,000 out of the 270,000 it ordered because it couldn't sell them. At least HP agreed to give them away at liability cost instead of dumping them in a landfill. Notice HP did not pull the Pre and Veer phones from the shelves or put them on fire sale. HP's reasons for keeping…

I have real trouble understanding that. I don’t know how tablets are presented in the US but in my local German electronics retailer they are all right next to each other. The TouchPad even had more promotional material around it, it should have sticked out. (Ignoring the iPad which is right next to the other tablets but on an extra table with all the other Apple stuff.)

Ignoring the iPad, I don’t understand how the TouchPad could be less successful than all the other tablets. Android can’t be the reason, that’s not how the tablets are presented. They are the Samsung tablet, the Motorola tablet, the Asus tablet, the HP tablet. It’s not even obvious that the Motorola and the Samsung tablet run the same OS, at least if you are a casual shopper, trying out tablets. To me, Android and webOS didn’t feel different enough to make one the clear winner, at least if you have limited time and are just playing around with it. The price certainly can’t be the reason, they all cost about the same.

Android tablets seem to at least be a little successful, why is the TouchPad not at all successful?

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#56

Post by codedivine »

bvi wrote: post #30
ayanb wrote: post #23

HP has a highly distinguished board of directors. I find it strange that no one is highlighting the fact that Léo Apotheker is definitely enjoying the vote of confidence of the top level executives, otherwise this would have never been possible.

Remember, HP's board underwent a major shakeup once Léo came in: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/28/hp%E2%80%99s-bo...

Indeed, I just looked at http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-g...

There are 14 board members in total including Leo the CEO. Out of 13, 6 were appointed in 2011 while the board leader (Lane) was appointed at the same time as Leo Apotheker. That means out of 14, only 6 precede Leo.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#57

Post by [deleted] »

acangiano wrote: post #22

I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting o…

[deleted]

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#58

Post by technoslut »

acangiano wrote: post #22

I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting o…

I think his explanation is more than plausible. I don't believe Gruber's post happened coincidentally. I came to the same conclusion after reading a post on Hacker News by Cringely in February of this year. I would've posted Gruber's post but I felt it was redundant on this forum.

What happened didn't change. The blame rests on the HP board, regardless if the members changed over the years. I believe the Apple board got lucky when they re-hired Jobs because he was the perfect man for the job.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#59

Post by technoslut »

palish wrote: post #52
blinkingled wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing Hurd was the right thing to do - I will argue that they were late. Hurd was seen as aligning with Oracle and making decisions that did not conflict with Oracle. EDS, conveniently missed Sun acquisition, consumer focus in lieu of enterprise paints a consistent picture. There is a reason Hurd now works at Oracle and Larry did not like him getting fired. Besides show me what he did apart from cost cutting. Apothe…

Wait --- what? They fired Hurd as a direct consequence of him paying a hooker. What's that got to do with strategy? Or are we claiming that it's "okay to lie" about why someone is being fired..?

I wonder if Hurd stayed, regardless or not of personal issues, if he would've been fired for job performance.

To me it doesn't change, the HP board guided this company towards ruin.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#60

Post by bad_user »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #40
runjake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing Steve Jobs was the best thing Apple could have done, long term. Apple is where it's at today because of what Steve Jobs learned and grew from his "failures".

This is true also because Steve Jobs speaks about it in his Stanford speech, but it's a rare event that you cannot know in advance. No company fires the CEO to let him learn more and then come back to rescue the company. Moreover Apple went on the verge of bankruptcy before Steve Jobs came back. So it was still a bad decision for the board to fire him.

The board of directors fired Steve Jobs because of the company's poor performance. It wasn't as if it went downhill only after Steve left.
Post reply on HN