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I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

philmckinney.substack.com

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Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#111

Post by Kneecaps07 »

kevinsync wrote: post #94

I was fully "in" on webOS :( Still got a Palm Pre, Pre 2, Pre 3 and TouchPad in a box, and an LG webOS 2.0 OLED that died in the basement. Apps were built sort of like PhoneGap, but intentional and supported rather than a middleware work-around. webOS introduced the card concept that we all use now, along with a very coherent design language, and the devices were cool (to me, albeit a bit flimsy) with full keyboards…

I still miss my Palm Pre. I've sat here since it died and watched Android and iOS slowly adopt the UI that my Pre had 15 years ago. We were swapping between apps with cards and swiping them away a decade before anyone else.

I had multiple friends end up buying the Pre and the non-slidey Pre (I can't remember the name) because they saw what I had thought it was so cool.

Now my LG TV runs WebOS, which I assume is the name with no shared code, but who knows.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#112

Post by lukevp »

bluGill wrote: post #99
iconara wrote: post #69

> "Then, in late June 2011 […] I faced a medical emergency requiring immediate surgery and a eight-week recovery period confined to bed. […] On July 1, 2011, HP launched the TouchPad tablet running WebOS 3.0 […] The launch was botched from the start. HP priced the TouchPad at $499 to compete directly with the iPad, but without the app ecosystem or marketing muscle to justify that premium. The device felt rushed to ma…

The price was likely too high, though that is debatable. However the real take away is if you want something like this to work out you need to invest in to for years. There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much - it happens too often for anyone to call it wrong. It isn't clear what was predicted, but marketing should have predicted a range of units sold (and various price points havi…

Windows phones were incredible, the OS was the most responsive at the time by far. No apps though. They were building in Android app support when they pulled the plug.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#113

Post by Aaargh20318 »

Zigurd wrote: post #27

This is not to take away from the corporate Vogon tragedy described in the blog post. WebOS could've been a credible competitor to iOS and Android. But the weak spot is right in the name: It's a web UI platform. Look at Google's attempts to make ChromeOS into a tablet OS. While it's less clear cut now, back when HP acquired WebOS, they would've had to put in a lot of work to make WebOS competitive, and enable WebOS a…

> they would've had to put in a lot of work to make WebOS competitive, and enable WebOS apps to work as well as iOS or Android apps.

It’s not enough to be as good as the competition when they already have an established ecosystem of apps and accessories. To be successful you have to leapfrog the competition. You need to offer something so compelling that consumers are willing to put up with the inconvenience of the lack of ecosystem. This is why WebOS and BlackBerry 10 failed. They were as good as iOS and Android but not good enough to overcome that massive downside.

This is also why Apple managed to get a foothold even though established players like Nokia and RIM had the market cornered. Instead of catching up to the competition they leapfrogged them.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#115

Post by justsomehnguy »

snoman wrote: post #42
Zigurd wrote: post #27

This is not to take away from the corporate Vogon tragedy described in the blog post. WebOS could've been a credible competitor to iOS and Android. But the weak spot is right in the name: It's a web UI platform. Look at Google's attempts to make ChromeOS into a tablet OS. While it's less clear cut now, back when HP acquired WebOS, they would've had to put in a lot of work to make WebOS competitive, and enable WebOS a…

My personal conspiracy theory is that Nokia was an orchestrated takedown by MS. Get a leader in there to tank its stock for an acquisition. MS just shit the bed on the other side of it and failed to deliver a competitive-enough mobile platform.

Nokia were in a deep shi^W trouble way before Elop's memo.

Sure, MS benefited greatly from this situation but Nokia was in the steady downhill since 2008.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#116

Post by navigate8310 »

paxys wrote: post #13

The new CEO was brought in to chart the path forward not dwell on the past, and clearly in his eyes the Palm acquisition was a sunk cost. The Touchpad disaster, combined with the CTO completely shirking responsibility for it (as you can tell from this article), probably showed him the writing on the wall. WebOS was neat for sure but HP was never in a position to compete with Apple. More mobile device launches would s…

HP had successful lineup of pocket PC devices that is iPAQ, so I still believe they could've made WebOS as alternate.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#117

Post by dwedge »

refulgentis wrote: post #39

It's pretty easy to pattern-match LLM writing even when there's been a lot of work put into it, and it wasn't one-shotted by the LLM. I bring this up because this is a very smart person, with an interesting story I've been waiting to hear for years, and an important point, but I couldn't read it. Not because LLMs were involved: whatever, that's fine. First, I'm reading then get an uneasy feeling when I see the "That…

At the end he's trying to sell his framework. Using AI for the copy isn't surprising

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#118

Post by liveoneggs »

I owned and loved a few palm pilots (and a handspring visor) but Palm was a nostalgia brand already by 2010.

In the proto-smartphone years they were competing with blackberry and losing in that "business-phone" use case. (Treo phones, etc) Maybe they got burned by the Palm VIIx! :)

DangerOS (sidekick phones) came out and had killer games and even Windows CE had a few devices out there, with Palm integrations iirc.

The year HP bought palm - 2010 - had the Android Nexus One and the venerable iPhone 4! HP never had a chance.

RIM (blackberry) was the only one who ever had a (distant) chance at a 3rd player in the smartphone universe at that time.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#119

Post by PaulHoule »

snoman wrote: post #42
Zigurd wrote: post #27

This is not to take away from the corporate Vogon tragedy described in the blog post. WebOS could've been a credible competitor to iOS and Android. But the weak spot is right in the name: It's a web UI platform. Look at Google's attempts to make ChromeOS into a tablet OS. While it's less clear cut now, back when HP acquired WebOS, they would've had to put in a lot of work to make WebOS competitive, and enable WebOS a…

My personal conspiracy theory is that Nokia was an orchestrated takedown by MS. Get a leader in there to tank its stock for an acquisition. MS just shit the bed on the other side of it and failed to deliver a competitive-enough mobile platform.

Yeah, we all know that a corrupt person in government is often sponsored by a corporation to rip off the government. I wonder if sometimes a corrupt person is put into leadership at Corporation A who is really on the take from Corporation B with the job of wrecking a competitor.

Re: I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it

#120

Post by myvoiceismypass »

whatever1 wrote: post #64
jldugger wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone 4s shipped October 2011.

Oh you are right, I remembered 4 was released in 2010, and my mind jumped to 5. But they were doing the s cycles back then.

And the first WebOS device launched was not 2011, it was actually the Palm Pre in 2009. The iPhone 3G and the App Store were not even a year old when that Pre launched.
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