HP Spinning Off WebOS and Exiting Hardware Business 514
A number of readers submitted rumors about some announcements HP was set to make today. Now, the announcements have actually happened, and the news looks grim. For starters, they are exiting the tablet and phone market and repositioning webOS for use in appliances and vehicles. While confirming they are in talks to acquire Autonomy, they also announced they are considering exiting the PC hardware business entirely in order to focus on their software business.
They've been practicing (Score:3)
Out of the PC market? Good Riddance! (Score:2)
HP has been one of the worst PC manufacturers [squaretrade.com] in the last 10 years (if not more). I have had a very low view of their PCs since the time they started selling thsose small towers with everything cramped in (about 10 years ago).
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Judging by the amount of bloat-ware that's been coming with HP computers for the past several years, it would seem they've been practicing for this very moment.
OMFG BLOATWARE My wife bought an HP laptop a while back and I couldn't believe the amount of bloat on that thing. I wanted to remove it for her but she just doesn't understand. HP selling their computer business = no great loss. Her newest laptop is an Asus and it's almost bloat free.
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Yup, they fucked me over with the nVidia meltdown issue they refuse to do anything about. An $800 notebook down the fucking tubes and just two years old.
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Judging by the amount of bloat-ware that's been coming with HP computers for the past several years, it would seem they've been practicing for this very moment.
My hp laptop overheated and they will not do anything to help. they have had other models do this as well but they had to pay something to them due to lawsuits. I spent way too much money a few years ago to have the computer overheat and stop working. So I was not going to buy anything else HP ever again as the service was not good at all. Marion
Was that due to a defective junk series nVidia chipset? Geforce Go 6150? 7200?
Figures (Score:5, Interesting)
"According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory."
http://allthingsd.com/20110816/ouchpad-best-buy-sitting-on-a-pile-of-unsold-hp-tablets/ [allthingsd.com]
Re:Figures (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or just get a $250 Barnes and Noble "nook color" ereader, put Android Cyanogen mod7 on it...and you get a nice tablet for cheap.
I got my brand new for like $135 with some credits I had. The only thing it doesn't have is a camera, and so fa
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Well except the Xoom which was as big of a flop. Took it nearly 6 weeks just to sell 100k units.
Even worse than that (Score:2)
You wanna check how many iOS tablets were sold (Score:2)
during that same period of time?
HP should have got on board w/ android (Score:2)
Looking at their WebOS powered tablet at BestBuy next to the iPad2 and android units like the Galaxy Tab, all I can think is WTF, HP?
But thanks for buying my Palm shares.
Why? (Score:2)
There are already several companies selling Android tablets. What would HP have to bring to the table, that they don't? At least with WebOS they had an opportunity to do something different and better. My take is that they either should have committed more to WebOS or not bothered with "smartphone" tablet at all.
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I love my Apollo workstations. I still have two of them.
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>. HP just did a half ass job of building market traction.
I'd say it's more like, they jumped the gun and tried too hard to monetize it too quickly. When the G1 came out, Google was smart. They created a phone that was a tiny bit underwhelming, but was mostly a fully-functional hardware reference platform that worked perfectly on at least one major US network, and worked equally well overseas. They didn't expect to ever make a cent from the G1's sales, because they understood that the G1's entire purpose
Sad, sad, sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally blame Carly Fiorina for the travails of a once-proud company.
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Yep. Although, Lew Platt gave her a good running start. But she (and Itanic) really finished it off.
Agilent (Score:2, Informative)
This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.
No, that was Agilent, the test and measurement company.
We're talking about HP, the Printer/Business Services/Bottom-barrel PC company. Totally different.
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The test and measurement company also made the best printers in the industry for quite some time.
HP should sell their printer division to Agilent, along with their name, and then shut down.
Re:Agilent (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.
No, that was Agilent, the test and measurement company. We're talking about HP, the Printer/Business Services/Bottom-barrel PC company. Totally different.
Shows you the importance of a name on perception. Often major companies split or spin-off major parts of themselves to the extent that one could question whether the current user of the name is meaningfully the "same" company as the original.
It occurs to me that it may be useful to consider the lineage of the various business entities formed from mergers, takeovers, spinoffs and splits *without* attaching weight to their names. Then- considering lineage, size and business interests- askine oneself whether the current holder of the "big name" is any more clearly the "true" continuation of the original company than any of the others.
In the case of Agilent, it's still (apparently) far smaller than HP which remains the obvious parent, but it could also be argued that it represents the roots of HP.
Motorola is the obvious example that sprung to mind though. It's spun-off or split major parts of itself several times and at the start of this year split into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobile, the latter being the business that Google recently bought. But this is after already having spun/split-off its semiconductor divisions in 1999 and 2004, as well as its original radio business (on which it founded its reputation) having been sold off in the 1970s.
Is Motorola "Solutions" (*) still the same Motorola that created the old products people get nostalgic about? That's questionable.
(*) Absolutely meaningless sound-good business expression that's so banally all-pervasive that it doesn't even qualify as a "buzzword" any more.
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Thanks:
I was going to suggest the same thing, but I forgot the Agilent name
I am curious, when HP and Agilent split, did all of the real engineer end up migrating to Agilent?
All of the real engineering was in the Test and Measurement group, which was what became Agilent. The industrial-strength computing business (the big minis and such) stayed with HP, as did the printer business, but all of the innovative stuff that made HP great were part of the T+M business.
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I disagree. I'd like to see them go under. They should sell their printer division to a company that's currently named "Agilent", and then they should just sell off all their assets and shut their doors. Then Agilent should rename themselves "HP".
Re:Sad, sad, sad. (Score:4, Interesting)
But why on earth would they even consider getting into bed with RIM? RIM's problems stem directly from their bizarre Frankenstein's monster leadership (2 CEO's and 3 COO's? Seriously??), and management appears to be in serious denial about the nature of their competition. Plus it seems as if the board doesn't see anything wrong with how the company is being led, so don't expect the situation there to change anytime soon.
Re:"I blame Carly" (Score:5, Interesting)
Fiorina's personality is irrelevant to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've compared her before with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. Both come from marketing backgrounds; when both assumed leadership of their respective companies engineers took a distant back seat; and investors rewarded both with flat stock prices in recognition of their inability to innovate and grow the business.
Everybody Off! (Score:2)
What will Russell Brand do now?
HP becomes Palm? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:HP becomes Palm? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Reversing? And competing with IBM? Better be better at it than HP is right now.
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I agree. I've got several dells and other generics and one HP box. The HP box is fantastic, and the next computer was going to be HP because of that.
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Sad day for WebOS (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry to see it go, but I'm not at all surprised. I was a release-day Palm Pre buyer (Sprint), and I LOVED WebOS, but Palm really blew it. If there were more apps and the hardware was better (and upgraded more regularly) I would probably have gone with WebOS over Android or iOS, but in the end they left me hanging with no decent upgrade path (the Pre was an okay first-gen device, but really needed a major followup at the one-year mark) and they just didn't attract the app developers (I mean the major developers, the indie devs were fantastic!). End result, I'm now a happy Android user (HTC Evo), but I still miss the great parts of WebOS (Cards, Konami-code to root, etc).
Well, I'll just keep hoping that some of that good stuff makes it to Android eventually. Last I heard that's where most of the WebOS team ended up.....
As for WebOS in vehicles....great, just what I need. People have enough crap that they play with instead of paying attention to the road, now they're going to be swiping through multiple cards on their in-dash systems looking for things while careening down the highway? Wonderful....
Also sad about WebOS (Score:2)
At one point in the early days I was hopeful it would actually overtake Android. It was a great OS with some fantastic ideas, and it doesn't deserve the short run it had...
Perhaps Apple should buy the WebOS division for the patents... :-)
TouchPad price? (Score:5, Insightful)
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At $100 I'd get one even if I can't put Android on it. It'd be a very cheap tablet browser.
Software? (Score:2)
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Re:Software? (Score:5, Informative)
HP's software business is EDS, which is charging governments vast sums of money for IT systems that don't work.
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Heh. I just bought the wife a new HP laptop, and I've been two days getting rid of all the shovelware. Running Windows 7, it was using 1.4 Gig of RAM at idle immediately after a reboot. The number of bullshit services running was just mind-boggling.
Patents (Score:2)
I wonder if patents had anything to do with it?
It sounds like its time to fire the CEO. They paid billions just a few months ago for WebOS from Palm and now have nothing to show for it. Either way that was a very expensive bad investment if you blow billions just to dump it a very short time later. If patents were that bad the CEO should have made sure their employees did a risk analysis and investigate this. I mean this is why you pay the employees right? Idiots
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Fire the CEO so he can get a $50m golden parachute, right?
I'm OK With This (Score:2)
Just as well, judging by the latest HP laptop I've seen, they weren't very good at it.
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I can't say for the laptops but the HP desktop I have is quite nice. Also the TouchSmart line was rather innovative if underpowered. Now Dell will have no competition in the desktop market and Apple will have no competition in the entertainment pad market. I don't see how this will be good for consumers.
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Just as well, judging by the latest HP laptop I've seen, they weren't very good at it.
As a proud Envy owner, I respectfully submit how wrong (and envious) you are.
Erk! (Score:2)
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hp is in the ink business (Score:4, Insightful)
Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball. (Score:2)
Palm provided a hardware and software platform in its PDAs that defined the industry. They were the leaders early on, edging out Apple, Casio, and many others, and they maintained that lead for a very long time. Then they dropped the ball. They stopped innovating, and they failed at multiple attempts to define themselves, all the while other companies came in and took over the market that they had locked in. PalmOS ultimately evolved into WebOS, built up a devoted niche market, and now this.
I am a long-time
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They also made themselves look very foolish in the whole "spoofing Apple's USB vendor ID" business to get the Palm Pre to sync with iTunes instead of doing it the proper, documented way like MarkSpace's Missing Sync - a piece of software that has its roots in Palm's early abandoning of the Mac platform leaving some of their users in the cold.
At that point I was starting to wonder, if someone *seriously* suggested deliberately breaking their USBIF contract terms and spoofing a vendor ID rather than devote so
Software business? (Score:2)
HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?
Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know.
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HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?
Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know.
How does what a random computer user might know equal a "software business"?
The Sooner The Better (Score:2)
Exiting the PC Business? (Score:2)
FTA: "...exploring a spinoff of its PC business"
That's entirely different. Summary blows.
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What will they call the PC-hardware spin-off? I vote for "Compaq".
"Digital" could work too, though there are a lot of consumers who wouldn't get that it's a name with history behind it, and think that "Digital Computer" is just a redundant way of saying "digital computer" but with uppercase letters.
what about printers? (Score:2)
Will the Spinoff cover them?
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They should spin off the printer hardware business, and just be a printer ink business: it's where the money is.
Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line (Score:2)
This move by HP reminds me exactly of IBM's move to sell of their consumer computing line to Lenovo back in 2005 [cnet.com]. At the time the CEO made the prescient observation that the consumer hardware business is a low-margin, low-profit business, and indeed for IBM, they've made much more money operating as a software and services outfit (aside from their mainframe line and supercomputing hardware).
So this leaves Apple and Dell as the only large computer-hardware companies in the USA.
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well there's always gateway. yuk. i'm extremely disappointed in this news. all 10 pc's in my house are HP's, as are 3 laptops.
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Well, it depends a bit on what entity ends up owning the PC division: whether it's sold to a foreign corporation or not. But really, does it make a difference where the corporate offices of the company are? Yes, it's nice that Apple has headquarters in Cupertino, Dell is in Round Rock, and HP is in Palo Alto, and that they provide good jobs and pay some taxes there, but they're all selling products that are made overseas.
Something missing (Score:2)
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I'm not sure what's missing. HP tried to get into the tablet business by buying Palm. The Touchpad bombed in spectacular fashion and will require them to take a huge loss.
Now they've decided they can't compete in that business. They probably should have figured that out earlier, but better late then never I suppose.
History of HP (Score:5, Interesting)
So, HP was an instrument company, started with an ingenious application of a light bulb [linear.com] no less. Then they became a computer company sort of by attrition, since they needed machines to control their instruments -- IIRC. Then servers came sort of naturally when they got to dabble with UNIX. Then the core instrument business got spun off as Agilent, pretty much tarring the name of Hewlett and Packard IMHO. Then the PC business gets spun off too. So what remains is servers? What the heck software is HP shipping that hasn't to do with their own hardware? It's becoming more and more of a joke to keep the same name. Their business got nothing to do with Hewlett nor Packard. They're turning in their graves. </rant>
Ummm... (Score:3)
Since they are replacing all the Dells at NASA with HP (at HP's request when they started the contract) - why would they now be looking to get out of hardware?
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Good bye. (Score:2)
I just see the last software designed by palm sinking. All which i have now as a memory is the port of graffiti as an input method for android.
I have a great name for the spin-off (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a great name for the spin-off (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that is a great idea. Consumers know Compaq.
Re:I have a great name for the spin-off (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, that is a terrible idea. Consumers know Compaq.
No more pcs?? (Score:2)
> they also announced they are considering exiting the PC hardware business entirely in order to focus on their software business.
Could it be... could this mean... that I will never again have to fix a customer's Pavilion?
Happy days are here again!
The skes above are clear again!
Let's sing a song of cheer again!
Happy days are here agaaaaaainnnnnnnn
But wait... doesn't that mean they'll sell existing stock at heavily discounted prices? Now I'm depressed again...
Great Strategy! After all, it worked for GeoWorks (Score:2)
Oh wait, it didn't.
HP is one of the "Big 4" (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Revenues != Profits. If the profits are terrible (i.e. they're just breaking even), then it might make sense to give up on that, or sell it to someone else who thinks they can do a better job with it, or is happy with low profits.
It's too bad, however, because even if a division isn't profitable, as long as it's breaking even (or slightly better), that's keeping a lot of people employed, and obviously it's keeping some customers happy too. But big companies want profit ueber alles, so just having good rev
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
that's keeping a lot of people employed
I obviously wasn't intending to talk about anything like this, but hey, you brought it up. :P So this statement you made is one that I see a lot of people making and I think it shows a disconnect between the understanding of what a profit actually means and what jobs are. You probably don't want to hear about it, but it bothers me, so deal.
A profit is far more than just making moneyIt shows that you are creating wealth. One of the fundamental law of economics is that trade creates wealth. By trading, you should end up with more than you gave up. When you can't make a profit, it shows that resources are being improperly allocated. If HP decides they suck at PCs and close down, that doesn't mean those jobs and resources are lost. It means they have to be reallocated. If HP sold 1,000,000 PCs a year, that doesn't mean there are 1,000,000 PCs less going to be purchased. A business staying around that doesn't make a profit is preventing those resources from being used by a company that can make better use of them and create more wealth. This creation of wealth is one of the biggest assets to the advancement of humanity and to encourage the opposite prevents progress from happening. The problem that a lot of people have, of course, is that the wealth ends up in the hands of the top and the elite, but this frustration should not be used to advocate the prevention of wealth creation. This is the result of very different causes.
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OK, I will bite. If a big company goes under, it surely does not mean that the market contracts. So far we agree. But it does mean that redundancy is reduced. Why is that bad? Well, first of all it means the system is not robust to events like Fukushima. Less players means more concentrated business chain means more vulnerability to disruption. Second, elimination of redundancy means less competition. Which implies higher prices, less quality, and less service. So what we get is not necessarily that resourc
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Your island example is bad. Shirts are valueless (or of equivalent value) in this context, so trading them doesn't create wealth.
Now if one half of the island had bird nests full of eggs, and the other had water, two people on the respective halves of your island could trade and both would have more wealth because on the bird side, plentiful food is worth LESS than the scant water and on the water side abundant water is worth LESS than the scarce eggs. Then trading is good for both parties, they both h
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I see nowhere in it that they are "considering exiting the PC hardware business."
HP says:
"HP also reported that it plans to announce that its board of directors has authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG). HP will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction."
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110818006301/en/HP-Confirms-Discussions-Autonomy-Corporation-plc-Business [businesswire.com]
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apple makes most of the money in the PC market. HP and dell mostly sell the cheap no profit machines.
the original plan was to sell a variety of models with the low end models being loss leaders for the more expensive ones. but Apple stole the more expensive market and left the loss leader market to dell/hp.
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apple makes most of the money in the PC market. HP and dell mostly sell the cheap no profit machines.
Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?
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Interesting theory, except Apple is the market leader when you take into account all of it's PC and tablet sales and Apple has a health profit margin for hardware. I tend to think their profit margins are a bit more sane than 2%. Thin margins are great for consumers up front, assuming you don't get bargain basement parts throughout, but not good for long term business. Given that HP rank the poorest in hardware failures in the above linked PDF, HP is a good example of cutting your margins too thin. Being #1
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apple makes most of the money in the PC market. HP and dell mostly sell the cheap no profit machines.
Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?
In that scenario, or is it better to look at ACTUAL market share? 10.6% [cnet.com] is pretty respectable. HP had 24.35% of the market, or say about two and a half times the sales in a quarter. Since Apple's margin is WAY higher (near 50%) and their average selling price is WAY higher, I would imagine the correct question is would you rather have $500 each from 2 million people or $25 each from 5 million people.
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Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?
The former, clearly. Why would you want to have to make 3 orders of magnitude more sales to get only 1 order of magnitude more profit?
Re:Divesting itself of its PC business? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I really liked my Palm Pre. I would have replaced it if HP had released a comparible replacement, but the Pre 3 still isn't out and I had to get an android phone. My new phone has more apps, a better browser and better hardware, but I still think WebOS's multitasking paradigm was better.
I was really looking forward to the Pre3, I was thinking about moving from my Droid-1 to the Pre3 when it comes out, but I guess now I'll have to hold onto the Droid a little longer and see what comes out of the Google-Motorola deal.
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Their PCs, laptops, and servers are the "mid-range" that I always get because Dell is cheap, but I can show how shitty they are and IBM/Lenovo is the best but too expensive to justify the cost.
Of course I always reinstall the OS because of all the crap they throw on it. But really you have to do that for all of them.
Re:Audio webcast link (Score:5, Informative)
Profit margins in the PC hardware business are razor-thin, and not likely to improve. So while their PC business does generate a large percentage of their revenue, it is a much smaller percentage of their profits.
Low margins (Score:5, Insightful)
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Commoditization of the hardware and razor thing margins leads to a rather severe avoidance of risk. Risk-taking is what drives innovation. That's why PC OEMs haven't given us anything amazing and revolutionary for fifteen years. They can't afford the risk. That's also why they dare not turn from Windows to new software platforms. To do so would be to decline Microsoft's co-marketing dollars which are not just all of their profits but offset a lot of their negative profits as well. This would drive the