I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by phonon » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:55 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #85

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP was definitely in a position to compete with apple, and always has been. They might not have been in a position to beat them, but you don't have to be on top to be profitable.

By 2011 Apple had launched iPhone 4s, Android manufacturers had sold 100M phones, and HP's latest and greatest mobile device looked like this - https://fdn2.gsmarena.com/vv/pics/hp/hp-ipaq-glisten-1.jpg . They simply had been asleep at the wheel for too long. And even then, the correct move would have been to adopt Android instead of thinking you could build and control your own ecosystem (something they finally did…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Veer and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Pre_3 could have been great, if they had been well supported.

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

#92

Post by Jtsummers » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:55 PM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #75

paxys wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The device was always doomed. They launched a direct competitor to the iPad with maybe 10% of the functionality. This article is just hubris on the CTO's part ("if only I had been around for the launch instead of my incompetent team, everything would have worked out").

One other thing to point out is that the entire tablet market only exists today due to re-use of the phone ecosystems. Just look at any popular app on a tablet - they all have massive borders/sidebars and within those it's just the phone app as-is. Not even Facebook makes a dedicated tablet app. It's all just the phone app ported across in a very crude way. The simple fact is that the tablet market isn't big enough t…

> Just look at any popular app on a tablet - they all have massive borders/sidebars and within those it's just the phone app as-is.

What apps are you using? That's not the case for any of the iPad apps I use anymore, though early on it was fairly common since quick ports could be made by checking the "release for iPad" box or however it worked back then. That was 15 years ago, though, things have changed quite a bit since then.

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

#93

Post by foobiekr » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

buildbot wrote: post #78

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…

That’s a little uncharitable I think, you could know all those issues and be hoping that marketing and management will hold off on a launch until things are set. And the pricing made a huge difference - at 250, it would have been a different story I think!

No one holds off a launch of a hardware device. Logistics production etc are all lined up and underway long before two weeks out. Two weeks out you’ve already shipped boxes to retailers a month prior.

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

#94

Post by kevinsync » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

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 was super sold on that but have long-since changed my mind after switching to iOS).

I came from a long line of "alt" devices though, Sidekick 1, 2, 3, Helio Ocean, etc, so you can see where my sensibilities lie HAHAHA

I would also get freakin' roasted by literally everybody I knew every time they saw it for being a hold-out and not getting an iPhone, but iOS just wasn't there yet as far as I was concerned. Apple/Android hadn't cornered the market yet and it was just a time with a lot of options (Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc).

Anyways, when I heard HP was buying Palm (and AT&T did a deal for Pre 3 exclusivity, I think), I assumed it would be a great thing for the mass adoption of what seemed like a really exciting future for mobile. Then HP poured gasoline on it and killed it with fire.

RIP late-oughts Palm, we barely knew ye!

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

#95

Post by myvoiceismypass » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

fredoralive wrote: post #15

JKCalhoun wrote: post #5

> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?

3rd party apps couldn't do anything in the background until iOS 4, and it's always been a bit limited. I think he's wrong about Android, although AFAIK Palm had a nicer task switching UI at first.

I thought proper Android task switching didn’t come until they released the first tablet version (Honeycomb, 2011). Interestingly enough this was after they hired away the webOS UX lead (Matias Duarte)

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

#96

Post by cmrdporcupine » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

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…

I actually think if there was anybody who could have competed effectively against Apple at this phase -- on branding -- Palm was it. It had recognition and association with the kind of product. And a patent portfolio, along with it.

I seem to recall there was rumours of the time of Apple sniffing around Palm as an acquisition target, even? I get the impression HP made this purchase simply on account of a strategic move to stop Apple from doing the same, and to get the patent portfolio that came out of it.

And the Palm Pre really was a decent phone, and the software relatively compelling... they just couldn't keep up on the HW manufacturing side.

At the time this was potentially a solvable problem, Apple hadn't become the juggernaut it is now.

I also recall that Jobs was famously pissed at Zuckerberg for launching Facebook on WebOS before iOS?

EDIT: I'd add to this that Palm had the talent at the time, too. Consider Mattias Duarte was the VP at Palm who headed up WebOS UX.. and then went on to direct the same thing for Android at Google, out of which came Material Design, etc. etc.

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

#97

Post by pipeline_peak » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

Palm had the worst combination, the monolithic hardware/software approach of Apple but without the branding and services to make that approach a desirable platform.

Imagine using a Motorola Droid without the services and app ecosystem provided by Google Android and oh wait, the sterile corporate branding only a dinosaur like HP could provide.......lovely.

Watching your brainchild deteriorate when there's physically nothing you can do sounds stressful, especially something you believe could've saved your company. At the same time, I don't think he wants to admit that there never really was anything he could've done.

How would a slightly cheaper Palm compete with Android? It would've been like a pretty Zune.

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

#98

Post by mlinsey » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

buildbot wrote: post #78

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…

That’s a little uncharitable I think, you could know all those issues and be hoping that marketing and management will hold off on a launch until things are set. And the pricing made a huge difference - at 250, it would have been a different story I think!

It was a hardware device launch, not a web product; pushing back the launch date by months or dropping the price in half with only two weeks to go (when the launch devices have been manufactured, sold to retail partners, and are probably being shipped to stores already) would only be done in the event of a true catastrophe (something along the lines of a gross safety problem), one big enough that leadership should have flagged it beforehand.

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

#99

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

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 having different predicted ranges!).

They didn't have the app ecosystem - no surprise. However the only way to get that ecosystem is years of investment. The Windows phone failed a couple years latter for similar reasons - nice device (or so I'm told), but it wasn't out long enough to get a lot of apps before Microsoft gave up on it.

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

#100

Post by myvoiceismypass » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

f1shy wrote: post #11

JKCalhoun wrote: post #5

> WebOS—true multitasking when iOS and Android couldn't handle it Am I missing something?

I must be missing the same, because I had a Palm back in the day, and the OS was IMHO absolute crapware

I remember thinking it was awesome to be able to ssh from my palm treo on the go 20 years ago - not all the PalmOS (different from WebOS) apps were crap, especially for the time!