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

Post by andrew_lettuce » Sat, Jun 14, 2025, 2:22 AM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #300

c-linkage wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow was that forecast bad! It reminds me of a meeting long ago where the marketing team reported that oil was going to hit $400/bbl and that this would be great for business. I literally laughed out loud. At that price, gasoline would be about $18/gal and no one could afford to move anything except by ox cart.

> At that price, gasoline would be about $18/gal and no one could afford to move anything except by ox cart. Just for some rough math here - I’m currently paying around $1.20/L for gas, and crude oil cost is roughly half of that, so if crude went up by 6x, I’d be looking at $5/L for gas. Gas is currently about 20% of my per-km cost of driving, so that price increase at the pump would increase my per-km cost by about…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 14, 2025, 2:25 AM UTC

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.

Post by fakedang » Sat, Jun 14, 2025, 2:48 AM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #331

Wurdan wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CTO shouldn’t be “hoping”, a CTO should have been influencing those decisions (including pricing) all along. If he only realized the price was wrong when the product hit the shelves (while he was in bed recovering), then he has no place in lecturing others on their lack of strategic perspective.

I don't think there's a world where you can hold the CTO responsible here. I get his colleagues anger and understand it. That said, this is IMO as clear cut as you can get for a case of absolutely ludicrously poor decisionmaking on the part of Apotheker. Bad strategy from bad principles, brought in from an unrelated and way smaller company. I genuinely can't fathom doing such a radical pivot with a business that size…

Post by eqvinox » Sat, Jun 14, 2025, 3:10 AM UTC

Post by mardef » Sat, Jun 14, 2025, 3:29 AM UTC

yftsui wrote: post #412

lukevp wrote: post #112

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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.

My experience with Windows phone around 2010 was exact opposite, very slow and clumsy. I recall I tried a HTC phone on WM 6.5, far behind iPhone 3GS