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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

#61

Post by raganwald »

nknight wrote: post #50
chollida1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd imagine one of the biggest reasons is patents. If they spin out the business they have to sell the patents. If they're going into a new market where they don't traditionally have alot of expertise their only chance of not getting sued into oblivion is to be able to cro…

What? Why would they have to sell the patents? Keep the patents, license them to the spin-off, no?

In the current legal environment, my guess is that a technology with patent licenses is nearly worthless compared to a technology with patents. Note that if someone wants to license webOS, naturally they license the patents. But who would want to buy the business but not the IP? That’s like licensing the operating system, being responsible for maintaining it, and paying a massive fee for the license up front. Such a business would be hard to run and hard to sell since you aren’t buying the IP and therefore can’t resell it.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#62

Post by blinkingled »

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..?

It's of course not OK to lie and get caught. If the board wanted him badly I am sure they would have found other ways of keeping him around - fines etc and worst case hiding it or downplaying it. Things aren't that simplistic at corporate board level of a multi billion company.

Fact of the matter is that he was going to be shown the door - if not for lying then for job performance. He just wasn't doing the things the board wanted him to do. That never ends well.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#63

Post by lukifer »

ugh wrote: post #55
ansy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What killed the TouchPad more than anything was lack of differentiation. If they had been $400 from the start, they could have been "the iPad, but cheaper". They could have started with a 7-8" model. They could have targeted specific niche markets or verticals en masse, preloading them with use-case specific apps and selling thousands of units at a time to big orgs.

As it is, the webOS is a brilliant OS which HP completely squandered. I hope it somehow lives on via skunkworks or homebrew; I plan on keeping my $99 unit, as the browser and e-book functions will keep it useful for years to come.

(Side note: it's also occurred to me that webOS is perfect for large-scale touch computing, of the "big-screen drafting table" variety. Why they haven't pursued this instead of touchable iMac knockoffs is beyond me.)

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#64

Post by nivertech »

masklinn wrote: post #53
nivertech wrote: post #43

"Autonomy — a company I’d never heard of before" Autonomy is a leader in their field

Which is very small and hard to see, especially for one Gruber which does not work as a corporate drone

NLP, Text Categorization, Unstructured Data is a huge field.

I worked in a startup, whose competition was Autonomy's consumer internet spin-off in 2001

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#65

Post by j_baker »

bad_user wrote: post #60
DeusExMachina wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No they didn't. They fired Steve Jobs because they didn't get along with him. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/06/why-i-fired...

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#66

Post by teyc »

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..?

Hurd didn't pay a hooker. At worst he was having an affair with a events organiser. With full hindsight, I'd say the board wanted Hurd and consumer business out.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#67

Post by teyc »

nknight wrote: post #50
chollida1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd imagine one of the biggest reasons is patents. If they spin out the business they have to sell the patents. If they're going into a new market where they don't traditionally have alot of expertise their only chance of not getting sued into oblivion is to be able to cro…

What? Why would they have to sell the patents? Keep the patents, license them to the spin-off, no?

Cisco did the same with the Flip. Killed it but didn't want to mess around untying the IP.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#68

Post by teyc »

lukifer wrote: post #63
ugh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What killed the TouchPad more than anything was lack of differentiation. If they had been $400 from the start, they could have been "the iPad, but cheaper". They could have started with a 7-8" model. They could have targeted specific niche markets or verticals en masse, preloading them with use-case specific apps and selling thousands of units at a time to big orgs. As it is, the webOS is a brilliant OS which HP comp…

Actually, there are better places than trying to differentiate on price.

Printing with the iPad is a prickly issue today. If HP were to even launch one printer that worked with the TouchPad, it would have been an opening salvo that Apple will have to scramble to catch up.

Secondly, cameras represent the last bastion of consumer goods that hasn't been computerized the way a music player has been computerized. HP could have licensed WebOS to camera manufacturers and build up a defense against further penetration from Apple. Nikon, Canon etc should be concerned that they have nothing if Apple decided to eat their lunch.

Re: A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

#69

Post by teyc »

masklinn wrote: post #51
skrebbel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, mak…

That reminds me, HP acquired an Australian company Tower Software back in 2008 [1]. That was three years ago. I think these acquisitions have paid dividends and now HP are signalling they are "all in" and put up all their chips in the software and services space.

[1] http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080331xb.html

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