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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

#351

Post by melbourne_mat »

duskwuff wrote: post #251
joecool1029 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 having different predicted ranges!). Shout out to the Itanium sales forecast: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Itanium_...

And its inverse, the IEA solar energy forecast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reality_versus_IEA_predic... (This version of the graph is pretty old, but it's enough to get the flavor. The rate of new installations is still increasing exponentially, and the IEA continues to predict that it'll level off any day now...)

Those 2 charts are amazing! At least the Itanium people adjusted their curves downward over time, looks like the IEA just carried on regardless!

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

#352

Post by bigfatkitten »

RajT88 wrote: post #257
7thaccount wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted as my experience was similar. I owned 3 windows phones over the years and they were always an absolute joy. The UI was very polished, the call quality was terrific, the camera was awesome, and it did have plenty of apps even if it was a tiny percentage of android or iPhone. To be honest though, I've never been one to care about apps. My experience was anyone who actually took the time to play with one loved i…

The only Windows Phone people I know either worked for Microsoft, or were Microsoft superfans. (And the one friend who liked to just be a contrarian - this time he was right, but he's usually wrong)

I bought one cheap at Costco as a travel phone, and I enjoyed using it enough to make it a daily driver once I got home.

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

#353

Post by rawgabbit »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #296
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…

I agree with this - I was trying to read between the lines about what felt like "face saving" from the author, and what were really executive leadership failures. That said, Leo Apotheker was such a complete speed-run, unmitigated disaster for HP, that I'm inclined to have a ton of sympathy for the author and believe his point of view. I thought the author was actually overly generous to Apotheker - the Autonomy acqu…

Apotheker was the product of HP’s incompetent board. The board fired Mark Hurd who had rescued the company after Carly Fiorina’s disastrous tenure. Hurd, was investigated for sexual harassment, found innocent, and fired for inappropriate expenses.

The board then hired Apotheker whose grand strategy was to sell everything including the printer business and buy Autonomy a hot British company. The board signed off on this. It is the equivalent of selling your farm and tractor for some magical beans.

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

#354

Post by melbourne_mat »

bluGill wrote: post #199
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #186

I need this part explained to me. And it's about why I still believe in HP despite everything that went wrong. This utterly baffles me. [checks] The post isn't 25y old. Author is obviously intelligent and posses self awareness and analytical skills. The only way that remark makes sense: 1) HP has some enterprise division that makes stuff I'll never see and 2) Author is Enterprise only doesn't know their consumer divi…

HP got split since then - the HP you think of today is not the company it was in 2010. Too bad, HP used to be a great company that earned their great name. Your questions though are valid.

Had a black and white laserjet printer in the late 1980s. Was a magnificent device and super reliable.

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

#355

Post by tlogan »

DannyBee wrote: post #283
ang_cire wrote: post #77

> I realized the fundamental problem wasn't my absence. It was a systematic mismatch between Leo Apotheker's experience and the role he was asked to fill. > SAP's annual revenue while Leo served as its CEO was approximately $15 billion. The HP board hired a CEO whose largest organizational experience was running a company smaller than HP's smallest division. Based purely on revenue management experience, Apotheker wo…

Oh, it's worse in some ways - Leo didn't leave SAP to take this job. Instead, SAP's board chose not to renew his contract in Feb, 2010, so he resigned. SAP board; This guy sucks let's move on HP: we'll take him!

Exactly.

Leo Apotheker really did not understand software development and all of nuances running a software company.

While Henning may not have been particularly business-savvy, Leo demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of SAP’s value network.

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

#356

Post by melbourne_mat »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #186

I need this part explained to me. And it's about why I still believe in HP despite everything that went wrong. This utterly baffles me. [checks] The post isn't 25y old. Author is obviously intelligent and posses self awareness and analytical skills. The only way that remark makes sense: 1) HP has some enterprise division that makes stuff I'll never see and 2) Author is Enterprise only doesn't know their consumer divi…

> This utterly baffles me. [checks] The post isn't 25y old. Author is obviously intelligent and posses self awareness and analytical skills.

One lens on this is that according to him he hasn't sold a single share since he left the company. That would mean he has a substantial monetary reason to see that people keep believing in HP.

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

#357

Post by isleyaardvark »

phkahler wrote: post #105
ang_cire wrote: post #77

> I realized the fundamental problem wasn't my absence. It was a systematic mismatch between Leo Apotheker's experience and the role he was asked to fill. > SAP's annual revenue while Leo served as its CEO was approximately $15 billion. The HP board hired a CEO whose largest organizational experience was running a company smaller than HP's smallest division. Based purely on revenue management experience, Apotheker wo…

>> At some point "management" and "executive management" started (falsely) being viewed as their own dedicated skillset that is independent and unrelated to the business itself, when in reality they still require specific understanding of the skills and processes over which they preside. You can't just drop any CEO into any other CEO position, and think they'll succeed. There are aspects of management that are indepe…

Was that intended to be similar to the real life movement of John Sculley from Pepsi to Apple?

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

#358

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

dpedu wrote: post #344
rsstack wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HP has some enterprise division that makes stuff I'll never see and It's a separate company now: HPE "Hewlett Packard Enterprise". He mentions them in the blog post, but if you don't know that in 2015 HP split into two companies, you might not realize. He holds stocks in both companies, HP and HPE (in 2015, it was the same number, but since then there were some splits).

HPE sold its software arm to Micro Focus subsequently as well

I was part of that transition. Great times explaining why my job changed 4 times in 18 months.

Startup -> HP -> HPE -> Micro Focus -> new job after I got tired of all this corporate deck chair rearranging.

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

#359

Post by microtherion »

adastra22 wrote: post #294
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is nothing wrong with getting the size of the market wrong by that much Remember that the Apple Watch did this. The initial release was priced way outside of market conditions--it was being sold as a luxury-branded fashion accessory at a >$1k price point on release. It was subtly rebranded as a mass-affordable sports fitness tracker the next year.

I believe you are mistaken, in several aspects:

1) Entry level watch models were available for about $400 right away, which is still more or less the starting point (though due to inflation, that's a bit cheaper now, of course).

2) Luxury models (>$1K price) are still available, now under the Hermès co-branding.

The one thing that was only available in the initial release were the "Edition" models at a >$10K price point, but there was speculation that this was more of an anchoring message (to place the watch as a premium product) and never a segment meant to be sustained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch

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

#360

Post by KerrAvon »

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…

In fairness -- if you continue reading -- his actual complaint seems to be focused on HP canceling the product a few weeks later rather than trying to deal properly with the aftermath of the launch.
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