12 ms·

It’s Official: HP Kills Off webOS Phones and the TouchPad

437 points by canistr 15y ago

andrewljohnson 15y ago
Glad we told them we weren't interested in developing apps when they contacted us on April 15. I eventually had a phone call with the fellow who emailed us, and I explained to him HP was doomed. He told me they were sure they could be a strong third! Here was the original email: Hello, I am part of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Development team that focuses on engaging one-on-one in strategic relationships with leading partners for webOS app opportunities. I wanted to touch base with you to see how things were going with your "APP NAME REDACTED", and also discuss with you our plans for HP’s upcoming webOS tablet launch. If you have some time, it would be great to connect to share where we are headed, and also hear more about your mobile strategy. Let me know when you’d be available and I can schedule a call- I hope to speak with you soon.
- rsanchez1 15y ago
  At least they reached out to you. I kept trying and trying to reach someone at HP regarding an issue with an app I was working on for a company I assume they would have wanted on board, but to this day, TO THIS DAY, I got nowhere with HP.
deleted 15y ago
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emehrkay 15y ago
I still want someone to couple webOS with great hardware and dev tools.
- canistr 15y ago
  I do too but it's no good if HP owns all the rights and patents. Not to mention all the developers.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Hardware seems to have be panned but are the dev tools bad?
  - knotty66 15y ago
    The dev tools are good.
drgath 15y ago
I'm astonished that they aren't even going to bother selling it off. With the Google/Motorola merger, surely one of the Android partners has to be feeling a little uncomfortable right now. Hell, Motorola was always rumored to be working on its own JS-based OS because it didn't like the position of relying only on Android.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Who would buy it? HTC or Samsung? Nokia? The OEMs are worse at making OSes and dev ecosystems than even HP which has experience making a UNIX based OS. And it's not as if buying WebOS will stop the patent attacks, in fact, it may increase them. They would simply be better off with Android/Windows 8 for tablets As Nokia's CEO said, it's a battle of ecosystems now, not devices anymore. Maybe RIM's next, either for a takeover, or a failure.
  - robterrell 15y ago
    Who would buy it? How about the bidder who lost out, Apple? http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rim-google-hp-palm-2010-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rim-google-hp-palm-2010... One year later, I'm sure whatever it was Apple saw in Palm (patents, according to the above article) is still there.
    - nl 15y ago
      Oh please.... An unnamed source claimed something that the article itself says there's a bunch of problems with this idea and we are supposed to believe it? It was more likely a rumour that someone at Palm was putting around to try and push the price up, and the "source" believed it.
- roc 15y ago
  More surprising than not selling it: why not just send webOS out with the consumer PC spinoff? There's probably not a high-margin future for it but surely it would be an asset for a consumer company.
- 15y ago
A-K 15y ago
Tragic. It makes me wonder: Now what is Jon Rubinstein's future at HP?
- vbone 15y ago
  Doesn't matter. He led the destruction of what could have been a great product.
  - canistr 15y ago
    I guess the writing was on the wall when their UI designer left for Google.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- jfruh 15y ago
  I'm guessing none? Probably his future is counting the money he made for himself and Palm shareholders 16 months ago in the buyout.
shaggyfrog 15y ago
So does Microsoft come a-calling with a bag with a giant $ on it, and suggest coming back to Windows? Does Google dangle Android? Or does this mean HP is getting out of mobile altogether? If so, that's a huge mistake, given the state of the market right now. Especially if they are spinning off the PC side of things, what's left for HP? Printers?
- orky7 15y ago
  if they buy autonomy($10 billion) then they are definitely in enterprise solutions.
- jaydz 15y ago
  HP is moving deeper into the Enterprise business. First with hardware and now with software. Are they trying to clone IBM or SAP?
  - roc 15y ago
    It looks like IBM with a side order of overpriced corporate IT hardware solutions as well. (PCs/Servers/Printers)
    - archangel_one 15y ago
      Sort of like what IBM used to be before they sold their hardware division to Lenovo, then.
- forgotAgain 15y ago
  Apotheker wants to make HP the next SAP. I guess he misses being there.
  - mbesto 15y ago
    Which is amazing considering the time it would take to create a brand new piece of software. Unless of course they buy one... SalesForce, Infor maybe?
- 15y ago
jemeshsu 15y ago
HP should open source webOS.
- RexRollman 15y ago
  I agree. I think it could make for a very interesting desktop OS, if done right.
- reemrevnivek 15y ago
  Agreed! Android is Linux + Java, Chumby is Linux + Flash, webOS is Linux + Webkit ( and iOS is...different). Definitely prefer the webOS option, and there aren't that many other permutations. Unlike the other options, webOS is composed of two open source projects. What prevents someone from knitting them together, with a little hardware interfacing? Would it be legally problematic to attempt to make an OS that was compatible with the existing webOS apps?
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    Well Java was supposed to be open source, too, until Oracle sh!t on it, that is.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Such a move from a CEO that just canned the whole thing after paying 1.2B to acquire it? Not likely.
recoiledsnake 15y ago
Are they going to make Windows 8 tablets? >HP’s wording up above leaves things a bit vague, with at least two potential routes left open: licensing webOS to others Why would anyone license something that's basically stillborn even with a company as big as HP pushing it? Obvious choices for OEMs seem to be Android or Windows 8. Sign me up for a $150 Touchpad at the firesale if there is one(resisting temptation to call it the Ouchpad like a headline did). That's how much I am willing to spend for the latest OS with no future joining the ranks of good-but-dead ones like Amiga and BeOS.
- RexRollman 15y ago
  I have the feeling that, if they are getting out of the PC business, they're probably getting out of the tablet business as well.
- emehrkay 15y ago
  If the hardware were $150, someone will figure out how to put honeycomb on it
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    Maybe HP can slap Android on the TouchPads they haven't sold? :)
- trun 15y ago
  WebOS has always been the most impressive mobile OS IMO, it's just never had a competent owner or decent hardware to back it up. I hope they do something with it. This, of course, is coming from one of the suckers that paid $599 for a Touchpad on launch day, so take it with a grain of salt.
  - jessedhillon 15y ago
    Coming from one of the suckers who bought a Palm Pre two years ago and is still using it (gotta love contracts!), I see nothing redeeming about WebOS. WebOS was Palm's Potemkin village -- a shallow attempt to convince a larger, dumber company that they were relevant enough to warrant a buyout, by creating the appearance of a technically impressive achievement. Apart from technical merits, of which there are only a few and they are debatable, one of the values of an operating system is the commitment of the company behind it -- and with clowns like Palm and HP who stopped issuing updates only months after launch, I say fuck them and any carrier who allowed these pieces of shit to pass technical acceptance. The only reason I've hung onto this thing for 2 years is because I'm determined to make this the phone that loses Sprint my business.
ConstantineXVI 15y ago
The TouchPad launched on 7/1 in the US; 48 days ago. By a strange coincidence, that's how long it took for the Kin to be cancelled as well.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Kin brought some decent tech to the scene but was heavily hampered by Verizon requiring a full cost data plan for a phone that was aimed at teens. Also was an abject failure of the Danger acquisition by Microsoft, so lets see how Google/Motorola does.
  - ConstantineXVI 15y ago
    Danger was a bit of a different scenario; the Sidekicks[1] and Kin were actually made by Sharp and Motorola, and Microsoft dumped Danger's OS for a WinCE derivative (not to mention the rumblings of being kneecapped by the WP7 team and such). Motorola does their own hardware, they already use Android exclusively, already had a working relationship with Google (Droid, Xoom), and Google doesn't seem intent on totally absorbing Moto like MS did Danger. [1] Or Hiptops, depending on if you're in Magenta territory or not
    - recoiledsnake 15y ago
      I don't see how having WinCE as the OS hurt Kin's chances in the market after it shipped? I am with you on the kneecapping from the WP team though. >Motorola does their own hardware, they already use Android exclusively, already had a working relationship with Google (Droid, Xoom), and Google doesn't seem intent on totally absorbing Moto like MS did Danger. That's a really hard tightrope walk for Google. The last one to try this model of both making hardware and licensing the OS was Apple during the nineties and we all know how that ended. They need to make money from Motorola (currently it's at breakeven) to justify the purchase price for shareholders, but without pissing off the other OEMs like Samsung/HTC. I am not saying it can't be done, but it's very very hard.
      - 15y ago
RexRollman 15y ago
It is amazing to me that of everyone who has made tablets, only Apple seems to be successful at it. Maybe it is just like someone said recently: there is no tablet market; just an iPad market.
- scorpioxy 15y ago
  I don't think that's right. The Motorola Xoom seems to have done ok, and so did the Samsung tablet. HP never exerted any effort into its tablet. It released a faulty device just to catch up with the rest of the vendors releasing devices. I believe that the next wave of Android tablets will be awesome, so the next generation from Motorola and Samsung. HP doesn't seem interested.
  - olivercameron 15y ago
    You mean the same Motorola Xoom that may have sold as few as 25,000[1] units? 1. http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/229402272 http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/22...
    - scorpioxy 15y ago
      That article also says "number of Xooms sold between 25,000 and 120,000". And don't forget that the price was very expensive at launch. My point was that saying the one true tablet is the iPad is false but HP is the wrong player to consider.
      - olivercameron 15y ago
        Even if it's 250,000 sold, that's still not even a dent in iPad sales.
    - xp84 15y ago
      Also, two of those Xooms are gathering dust here at work. We got them intending to write Android versions of the iOS apps we were making... The iPads were fought over, but one of the Xooms ended up in a file cabinet for a few months, and the other has barely been touched either. I feel sorry for those things. The only thing a Xoom is really good for is disappointing your kids on Christmas morning.
spitfire 15y ago
Wow. That was incompetent. Talk about ignoring your OODA loop. Who is the new guy running HP these days? Had HP been smart they would have stayed in the tablet business and aggressively integrated it with their software stack. Letting customers buy HP from end to end, sort of like Apple. They've just handed Apple a much easier path into the enterprise market - which they don't seem to be wasting.
- mrich 15y ago
  Apotheker is the CEO, and he strikes me as the wrong CEO for this company. This decision is bad, and I am not surprised it is being made during his tenure. He is a guy who is good with cost savings, but lacks in vision.
  - forgotAgain 15y ago
    I think he agrees with you. The solution he has come up with is to turn HP into a company he is the right CEO for. No hardware, more ERP type software. Shades of SAP which is where he was before HP. Not a great business plan if you ask me. You see it a lot in sports: change all of the players to match the new coach's plan rather than adapting the plan to fit the players you have. Usually they stumble around for a few years during the "turnaround" and then repeat the cycle with the next coach.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      Another CEO did the same thing. Steve Jobs when he came back to Apple. Jobs brought in his own team and basically just kept the Apple name. Seems to be working so far.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - masklinn 15y ago
        On the other hand, Jobs had founded the corp, had an almost mythical aura and the previous executive team had spent a decade fucking up Apple. Oh, and he refocused the company on its original core business, where Apotheker is moving HP away from its historical roots.
soapdog 15y ago
wtf?!?!?!? HP Pre 3 just launched on Palm Europe??? this makes no sense
- j_col 15y ago
  Speaking as someone who ordered one within Europe as soon as it was released directly from Europe, I'm frankly disgusted by this news and disgusted with the execs at HP. Will never buy one of their products again.
  - ja2ke 15y ago
    They're solving that by no longer releasing products.
    - j_col 15y ago
      Printers? Software?
      - ja2ke 15y ago
        True. Sorry for my lame, sarcastic hyperbole.
anigbrowl 15y ago
I didn't expect my prediction to come true quite that fast: RIM and HP are the big losers here; I can't see any reason to buy into the Blackberry OS or WebOS from either a consumer or business point of view. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879195 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879195)
deleted 15y ago
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Apocryphon 15y ago
And then there were 2 and a half.
- lukifer 15y ago
  Blackberry counts as a half? Seems high.
  - Apocryphon 15y ago
    I was thinking of Windows Phone 7. Maybe WinPho 7 + Blackberry is half.
martingordon 15y ago
HP spent $1.2B to acquire Palm a little over a year ago. According to Google Patents, Palm is the assignee in 12,000 patents. If HP can sell off the Palm patents for the same $/patent as Google is paying in their Motorola acquisition, they would net $8.8B. It's a sad day for innovation when patents are worth more than the product they back. Why wouldn't HP kill off webOS? How long would it have taken them to make $7B in profits off of webOS?
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  I think we are quickly approaching a point of patent detente. Google needs to get a few more patents and indemnify Android OEMs and maybe lob a few lawsuits at Bing etc. and MS will quickly cross license. Same against Apple.
  - sleight42 15y ago
    Detente? Between the big contenders, perhaps. The up and comers are still very much at risk.
    - olefoo 15y ago
      And one sign of a "mature market" is that barriers to entry rise. So for the big players the game of patent poker is the price they pay to keep the innovations down to a dull roar and to "manage the competitive environment", for actual innovators It just means that the slope is steeper, and if they are at all successful they will attract predators like Lodsys/IV. And while a few more entrepreneurs getting ground into hamburger by lawyers isn't that big of a concern in the larger scheme of things; it does mean that innovation in the tech sector is tamed and that we lose out on great products that never get a chance to compete in the marketplace.
      - sleight42 15y ago
        Mature? It's artificially stymied and partially stagnated by the external imposition of ignorantly granted government monopolies.
checoivan 15y ago
I don't think HP is throwing the towel, just not putting all eggs in a single basket. They know now how big a challenge is to turn it around on the tablet market. Cloud's the thing now so they're also getting into it.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Yeah, they're also selling off their PC division and buying Autonomy (records management industry leader from the UK) for $10 billion. Overpriced IMHO.
- 18pfsmt 15y ago
  I'd rather see them come out brandishing the Palm brand, and acquiring Fon, and then going after a "home cloud" machine. We could use the "unlimited" home connections we already pay for that are often pretty good (<40ms latency, at least 2mbps up). Handling the home-router firewall in a simplistic way seems to be the best way forward.
taylorbuley 15y ago
HP just created itself the perfect reason to open source WebOS and throw a disruption cocktail at Google and Apple
- floppydisk 15y ago
  I'd love to see a true "open source" mobile operating system make an appearance. However, I don't think HP has a track record of magnanimity when it comes to open sourcing expensive acquisitions IP.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    No corp is going to open source their proprietary technology when they stand to make money from selling it. There won't be an open source mobile OS, the best we can hope for are OSes with browser shells (Boot 2 Gecko) and html5 as the platform.
    - xp84 15y ago
      > when they stand to make money from selling it. Really? Seriously? Who would buy WebOS today? I'm all ears. I'm sure HP is too. Not only has it failed to gain a foothold under two separate companies, there is no successful licensed (more than $0 cost) mobile OS on the market today. You have two vertically integrated (AAPL and RIMM), and one free one (Android). Windows Phone is not as much of a failure as WebOS, but that doesn't exactly make the job easier for WebOS's next owner. It just means they have to fight even to be #3. Come to think of it, open sourcing the whole thing could be a good move. It's the Netscape strategy all over again. It wouldn't really make HP any money, though, so they won't.
      - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
        There are more buyers than just those who aspire to compete with the big dogs. WebOS has application far beyond just mobile OSes. Even PalmSource was sold and Garnet OS was in development until just a couple of years ago. There are thousands of potential buyers that have nothing to do with the smartphone wars.
thought_alarm 15y ago
I wonder what they're going to do with the hundreds of thousands of unsold units. Bury them next to the pile Atari E.T. cartridges, I suppose.
- msie 15y ago
  Or next to the Apple Lisas. Or the EV1s.:-(
  - thought_alarm 15y ago
    Actually, Apple sold out their Lisa stock after they rebranded it "Mac XL". Turns out there was a market for a "professional" Mac with an internal hard drive back then.
- aninteger 15y ago
  They could try selling them. They never even released the Pre3 in the USA. I'm still waiting to buy.
  - tiles 15y ago
    I was. Are you still planning on getting a Pre3 in spite of the announcement? I could deal with a smaller number of apps; but now I'm worried there simply won't be any apps at all for the ecosystem.
    - aninteger 15y ago
      I'm still sort of considering it. I already knew there wouldn't be many apps. That's actually fine for me because I'm buying it for the sole purpose of developing for. I use C/C++ and libSDL (which has support on all the major phone systems) for development. I don't use that many apps actually. Typically I just use a web browser, an ssh client (yes I actually SSH out from my phone often), and the odd solitaire card game every once in a while.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  Landfills are so 80s. woot-offs are where not-so-successful consumer electronics go to die these days (and I say this as a big fan of woot, and bargain basement priced semi-abandoned technology).
rbanffy 15y ago
Apotheker behaved in a truly managerish way...
- floppydisk 15y ago
  Or he's just further proof that most CEOs at large tech corporations seem to be lacking in the "vision" department.
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  I can't believe he backpedaled so much. This is backstab territory against the webOS community.
steveb 15y ago
Apple's path of disruption continues. I hope they open source WebOS, but they will probably sell it for the patents based on what MMI got from Google. I wish Nokia would have bought Palm. Expect the PC market to be disrupted next by Apple with Macbook Airs sucking up all the profits, and iOS devices crimping unit growth. Who is going to stick their neck out to make single-digit margins on a Windows 8 tablet?
- pedalpete 15y ago
  I agree the Macbook Air is an incredibly compelling hardware product placing the low-end mac in the same market as the high-end pc laptop. However, in the mid-to-low end, your average Windows machine is still significantly cheaper than a similarly equiped Mac. Expect PCs to still own the low-priced market. I'm not sure where you get your 'single-digit margins' comment from, but what are the real options for hardware manufacturers? You can't make a product without an OS, and your options are Android and Windows. I for one prefer a Windows device (WP over Android anyway). There is a market.
  - steveb 15y ago
    HP gets about 5-6% operating margin on PCs: HP personal systems group: http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1598003&highlight= http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-n... Personal Systems Group (PSG) revenue declined 3% year over year with a 5.9% operating margin. Dell had $2.9 billion in consumer sales, $ 73 million profit: http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/fiscal12q2_release.aspx http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/fiscal12q2_relea... Meanwhile, PC sales are declining in the U.S. and Europe. So it's a slow/negative growth market with small profits. Virtually all of the (non-Apple) profit in the PC market accumulates to Microsoft and Intel. Windows costs around $50, that means that even if they could make a tablet as cheaply as Apple, they would still make significantly less profit. And there is no evidence at all that anyone can compete with the iPad right now.
  - xp84 15y ago
    > Expect PCs to still own the low-priced market True. Until the generation who is now about 10 grows up and starts driving the PC buying decisions. They'll have been using tablets for 8 years or so and will think nothing of writing a paper on a tablet (bluetooth keyboards being easily available, although kids who have had smartphones since before puberty may end up being just fine typing everything on touch screens) and consuming all their media on a tablet and their smartphone. No bulky laptop required. What does a laptop add, from the point of view of a consumer? The ability to choose from a wide range of anti-virus software and browser toolbars? So when they go to college, they will see a bargain basement PC laptop with Windows 10 Home Basic Limited Edition (~$600) or an iPad 11 ($500), or an Android "Vanilla Custard" tablet ($449). Which one will they choose? I don't know, but I know it's not the crappy laptop. AAPL is positioning themselves in anticipation of that day, I have no doubt about it. They intend the iPad to be the "best" tablet the same way the iPod was the best MP3 player, and by 2007 everyone seemed to own an iPod. Once people are ready to let go of PCs the same way we let go of floppies, CRT monitors, and dial-up modems, they will be positioned as the smart choice.
barista 15y ago
Inevitable decision. It's really hard to do complete stack unless you are completely comitted to it like aaple is. It was always going to be an uphill battle for HP and I am glad they realized this sooner than later. I said this before. Nokia did a smart thing by adopting a third party software and leveraging their position in hardware to get a good bargain in return.
bradly 15y ago
HP sent me a TouchPad a couple weeks ago and after the first 2 days I haven't touched it. It just didn't seem like a finished product. I got errors and buggy UI interactions regularly. It lacked mature apps for basic usage like reading ebooks. Also, the screen rotation sensor is really sensitive so it almost always needs to have the orientation locked. A couple things I did like about the TouchPad over the iPad: shift key on the keyboard to access special chars easier and downloading apps without being thrown out of the App Store.
- canistr 15y ago
  To be fair, WebOS released version 3.2 which was apparently suppose to fix a lot of bugs that were there at launch in 3.0.
  - raganwald 15y ago
    “I went out for dinner with someone new, but my date was late to pick me up, the car was uncomfortable, the place I was taken had terrible service, and I had the runs after eating the food there.” “Yeah, but your date has learned a lot from taking people on dates like that and most of that stuff has been fixed. How about another date?” Not making fun of your factually correct statement, obviously, just pointing out that in many cases you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.
    - canistr 15y ago
      I disagree. Consider people's first impressions of the iPhone when the iPhone 2G launched, or of Android when the G1 launched, or how almost every Blackberry device has launched with buggy firmware requiring users to update the OS only a couple of weeks after launch. You're picking and choosing a specific example when, if you recall everyone else, it was pretty much the same thing. Buggy software was the sole reason why the TouchPad or even WebOS failed.
      - ssmoot 15y ago
        I don't know anyone personally who thought the original iPhone was anything less than The Jesus Phone.
ww520 15y ago
Is perseverance a passé in business these days? Everything has to be instant success? What happen to build the product slowly over time?
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  It's like Cisco and the Flip, isn't it - pure market plays, zero technical vision or willingness to go over the market'snhead to consumers. That said, HP never had a compelling vision for the mass market anyway.
- lukifer 15y ago
  No one seems to remember that it took the iPod 3-4 years to take over the MP3 market. HP also bungled by not offering a 7" model, and not competing on price from the very beginning, even if it meant running at a loss to chase market share.
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  Agreed. You have to wonder how they ever thought they would succeed if they were going to give in this easily. Any fool could see it was going to be harder than the effort they've made so far. It was always premised on pushing WebOS on all their PCs and other strategic ways to promote it ... none of which ever got even tried.
voyou 15y ago
They're also selling off their PC division, and buying Autonomy (http://www.autonomy.com/ http://www.autonomy.com/), who produce search and data-mining type software. I assume this is an attempt to re-focus on enterprise back-end stuff; this is a pretty big part of their business already, so I can see how this move might make sense.
ansy 15y ago
It appears this kills any chance of another manufacturer picking up webOS. If HP can't make it work why should anyone else try? Hindsight is 20/20. Google and Palm could have made a deal. At least then the WebOS team could merge with the ChromeOS team. And Google would have that patent trove for a bargain price. And an in-house manufacturer, too, if that's what it wanted. Too late for that now. At best Google will get the patents at a significant premium. ChromeOS is too far along to benefit from WebOS. And now Google has Motorola, what would it do with Palm's hardware?
saturdaysaint 15y ago
I wonder if WebOS will be attractive to any of the handset makers that harbor suspicions about Google/Motorolla - HTC? Samsung (call it Bada 2.0?)? Sony? - It strikes me that Apple could make a lot of money by making cheaper (sub $1,000) MacBooks now that the competition is running scared. If they could sell a 2010 white Macbook for $900 (which I presume would still have a respectable margin), you wouldn't see a PC on a college campus and they'd even make a compelling case for a bigger enterprise push..
- nvictor 15y ago
  googoolora :) i'm quite fond of that new name.
- xp84 15y ago
  > wonder if WebOS will be attractive to any of the handset makers As much as I hate Android and am friendly toward WebOS, and would like to see it make inroads, there's still the problem to solve of getting third party developers. Asking all the companies that make the apps that sell devices to develop for more than one or two dissimilar platforms is very hard. Sure, you can get a few, like Facebook and the others who have WebOS apps already, or you can count on an enthusiastic developer base to write grassroots replacement apps when the "big guys" snub your small platform. But you're not going to sell John Q Public with "We have dozens of apps and more are added every month!" Now, though you can't SELL them when you have few apps, you CAN bribe, and that's how Android clawed its way out of last place and into the lead. The only way to get those WebOS phones into enough hands to get developers to take notice and see it as a must-support platform is to give away the phones. Free with contract. That's the ONLY way. And this late in the game, it'd have to be free plus heavy marketing support.
revorad 15y ago
"Since I'd been very young HP had been the highlight company for engineers" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRmG72LBU8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRmG72LBU8 I wonder what Woz thinks now. It must be a sad day for many HP engineers.
- Splines 15y ago
  What sort of stuff are they doing now? In the consumer's eye, they make mediocre printers and PCs. In my university days I happily used a HP calculator and scope, in addition to HPUX. Are those businesses still going strong?
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    The calculator group was shut down, an HP division in Australia tried to revive it a while back. I think the HP calculators that are still being sold are done by a Korean OEM.
  - sciurus 15y ago
    Who makes better printers? I've always been a fan of HP due to their work on HPLIP.
    - Splines 15y ago
      Perhaps I was unfair - that's just my perspective of the current state of affairs. I've used some HP printers and some non-HP printers in the last few years, and the HP ones did nothing to stand out of the pack. I guess what I mean to say is that HP just seems like yet-another consumer electronics company. It isn't apparent to me if people have brand-loyalty to HP in the consumer segment.
- asmithmd1 15y ago
  That HP is still very much alive in their spin-off of lab and testing equipment, Agilent Technologies Inc
dman 15y ago
This is karma coming back to bite Palm for doing nothing with the BeOS rights.
dgregd 15y ago
One thing I do not understand. These HP and others CEOs earn millions monthly. So they are not stupid. How many desktop _platforms_ survived? Two. Windows and MacOS by miracle. So why they think that the world needs more than 2 or 3 mobile _platforms_? Why they think is it possible to beat Microsoft / Nokia / RIM / Samsung with already collapsed company? Why they bought Palm? What was the thinking? Or maybe they are personally making money with acquisition like this. Similar to CEOs from banking when they led whole financial sector to the cliff.
- SwellJoe 15y ago
  This logic could have been applied to Android. There were numerous "leading" mobile operating systems when Android launched. Likewise for Apple launching the iPhone and iOS. Sometimes, a company has to bet they can beat the competition, or we get stuck with the same old crap, forever.
  - wallflower 15y ago
    Dug up this vintage article on the all-in bet that was the iPhone http://counternotions.com/2008/07/16/bet-iphone/ http://counternotions.com/2008/07/16/bet-iphone/
- bodyfour 15y ago
  If they had successfully turned WebOS into a major player in the phone/tablet market it could have been a business worth tens of billions. It's perfectly possible that they thought "there's a 90% chance that this will fail, but it's still a smart gamble" The part that surprised me is that they're apparently killing off the hardware entirely. I'd assumed that their fallback position would be to become another Android manufacturer and at least make use of the Palm hardware expertise they bought. I guess they don't even think they can make a go of it in that market.
- donw 15y ago
  Stupid, no. Cowards, yes. I haven't seen a bold, risky move out of HP since... well, since they bought Palm and announced full-steam on WebOS.
blinkingled 15y ago
http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/HP_Q3_2011_earnings_call http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/HP_Q3_2011_earnings_call Height of vague cluelessness in the non-answers. Scary given the impact of the announcements. "all outcomes are possible, including a potential non-transaction" [about the PC business spin off ] - Why announce anything right now then? "How will you make webOS profitable? A> We expect the dev expenses to come down dramatically -- down to 1 or 2 cents per share a quarter. If you look at the run rate losses there, you can attribute them pretty much to Palm" -- i.e. we will make it profitable by killing it!
p0ppe 15y ago
Ari Jaaksi, HP's SVP in charge of webOS and services had an interesting tweet 40 minutes ago; "We will continue webOS platform full speed! #webOS"
- xp84 15y ago
  #goingdownwiththeship?
mathoda 15y ago
If you're an HP engineer working on webOS, given the commitment level your execs have to that platform, why wouldn't you jump ship? Startups, Apple, Google, Facebook, even Microsoft, may benefit in terms of human talent.
protomyth 15y ago
This is one of those times I wish Red Hat (or another Linux company) had the money to buy WebOS from HP. It would make a very interesting standard UI.
- sciurus 15y ago
  They're developing GNOME 3 at a much lower cost. Not that they seem to have any interest in the consumer market.
azth 15y ago
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14584428 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14584428 "HP is recognising what the world has recognised, which is hardware in terms of consumers is not a huge growth business anymore," said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of YCMNET Advisors. "It's not where the money is. It's in keeping with the new CEO's perspective that they want to be more in services and more business-oriented."
- hollerith 15y ago
  Makes sense when you consider how little consumers pay for new computers (and quasi-computer things like tablets) compared to 10 or 20 years ago.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
donw 15y ago
Once again, HP proves that the collective vision of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is so long-dead that the tombstone has crumbled to dust. I'm gutted. Genuinely. When I was younger, before Fiorina stepped up to be the first to rape the corpses of the founders, I was a massive fan of HP. My first graphing calculator was an HP48G, which taught me the joys of Lisp... well, Psil, because it came with Reverse Polish Lisp. WebOS could have been the resurrection of that culture -- fully JavaScript development environment, app development across multiple mobile and tablet platforms with a single environment... just genius. It's sad to see that vision evaporate, along with some of the novel telephony and interactive features that made WebOS a joy to work with.
- ra 15y ago
  That's exactly how I feel; WebOS is everything I want in a tablet platform. Seriously HP, how do you expect us to trust you next time you woo us to develop for your platform? Maybe there won't be a next time.
  - Steko 15y ago
    I wonder if one of those nervous Android licensees will pick up the WebOS assets as a hedge. It's a shame Nokia didn't have the balls/foresight to buy Palm, they could have been shipping gorgeous Nokia crafted WebOS phones for the last couple quarters instead of getting slaughtered by Android et al.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > next time you woo us to develop for your platform? What next time? HP jumped off a cliff. There will be no next platform. Not from them.
- chaostheory 15y ago
  I can't help but think of MS in this situation. It reminds me of MS breaking into the video game console market and fighting really hard to stay in it. Even after a major hardware snafu that cost them an estimated 3 billion dollars they kept fighting. After six years of work, it's finally doing well. WebOS was worth fighting for and it was in better shape than the 1st and 2nd Xbox IMO. What a waste.
teyc 15y ago
HP couldn't solve the chicken vs egg problem. An upstart OS from an established company is still an upstart OS. With MS launching their Windows tablet in the near future, HP will have to run very hard to establish their positions before the MS onslaught. The journey to iPad started with iPods and iTunes, then iPod touch apps, then iPhone and finally iPad. Steve's brilliant insight is that a music device with a computer is a computer, and outflanked the music industry and Microsoft in one fell swoop. Even today, MS still can't ship a music store on the PC. PS What Google did right was to give away the OS early on, and that allowed the Shenzhen manufacturers to produce the iPeds that swamped the low end markets. I don't know if this is going to work out in the long run, but installed bases is important if you want a developer ecosystem.
jsz0 15y ago
Is this a practical example of how Google's strategy with Android is just a bit anti-competitive? Neither Palm or HP could have seriously considered licensing WebOS to compete against Android because neither has a gigantic advertising business to subsidize the cost of development. On the flip side of that how is Palm or HP going to compete with companies like Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc who are getting their OS for free? If they skip the costs to develop their own OS and go with Android what differentiates an HP tablet from a Samsung tablet if they're running the same OS? All roads lead back to Android. You either use it or you can't compete against it.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  Android has its pluses and minuses. It isn't impossible for a platform with license fees to compete with that (see Nokia and WP7, for example). If HP can't find a way to package webOS to compete with Android (either directly or license), that is HP failing in the competition, not Google being anti-competitive.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
hollerith 15y ago
Does anybody here think that Microsoft will publicly concede defeat in the smartphone business like HP did today at any time in the next 4 years?
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Like they gave up on the XBox while bleeding billions?
nQuo 15y ago
I feel that one of the main problems with webOS is that many people like it a lot for the design and want to see its potential unleashed. Yet users don't vote for webOS with their wallets and developers don't make webOS apps, because many question whether it can be a sustainable mobile platform. Another reason is that the hardware running webOS has always been a bit of a let-down. On a side note, I can't help but wonder if Steve Jobs feels a little saddened to see HP's lack of vision and commitment nowadays to make great products. Yes, HP's obviously a major competitor but mostly in the PC industry where it makes much slimmer margins. Jobs' first summer job was at Hewlett-Packard and also where he met Steve Wozniak, so it's more of a personal sting to witness the once iconic company giving up on post-PC devices.
jabo 15y ago
Only yesterday I received this email from a HP.com email address. "Hello, I am in business development with the HP Touchpad group and we are recruiting apps to be ported to our Touchpad Platform. I saw your app on the chrome store and wanted to reach out to gauge the interest. Since the Touchpad supports both Flash and HTML5, our technical team believes that porting your Scribble and Pixza Lite apps to our platform should be fairly easy. We have support resources, MDF, marketing programs, and loaner devices to assist the effort. I would be happy to do a quick call to explain things further. Thanks," xxxxxx
nnutter 15y ago
WebOS was so close to being amazing. I can only hope they pull off something amazing with HTC or Samsung making the hardware. On the other hand if Apple makes a 7" tablet I won't even have a major reason to look elsewhere.
watmough 15y ago
This is really sad. I would have liked to have seen webOS carve out a decent niche against Android and iOS, especially seeing that application development could be largely JavaScript-based with C++ for the high-performance parts. Commiserations to all the people that worked on webOS.
jp 15y ago
I think the PRE2 is a great device. Google Apps email, SMS texting and Google Maps is fantastic. Browser works great. The clever status light, the window swiping, the bottom gesture panel logic and the clever window bundling makes Android and Bada feel completely retarded. Very good over the air software updater. Pointing that out since Bada is very dumb in that department and requires a huge iTunes like application. The HP CEO is either retarded or scared. Like... I got an HP laptop and an HP phone... and suddenly this is not cool enough for HP because of some premature, rushed to marked, tablets ? Disclosure: I have received a few developer phones over the years.
Luyt 15y ago
esr writes in his latest Smartphone Wars[1] installment: "WebOS, we hardly knew ye [...] WebOS has looked terminal to us for a long time. [...] WebOS didn’t suck, technically speaking. It was certainly better constructed than the turd-with-frosting that is WP7. [...] The cool thing about WebOS was that its architecture was beautiful. [...] WebOS’s problem was that the coolness stopped there. The source was closed, with all the usual bad effects including higher defect rates and lower developer interest. [...] Some sort of larger shakeout seems to be going on. [...] RIM is next to the wall, probably. WP7 should already have been terminated for extreme failure (Samsung’s own-brand Bada OS is actually outselling it[2]) [...] It might be that Android, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM are now entering scorpions-in-a-bottle time. [...] There can be only one... major incumbent. A whale, with a minnow or two in its shadow. Maybe Android should invert the Twitter fail whale into a success cetacean?" [1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3611 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3611 [2] http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Samsungs-Bada-outsells-Windows-Phone-in-Q2/1313075608 http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Samsungs-Bada-outs...
jamieb 15y ago
Some companies don't seem to have caught on that we are in a recession. People don't have the money to just go out and buy the latest cool gadget. No more one-upping friends. No more trying out the latest toy. In a bygone age HP Touchwhatsits would be littering Hummer H2 dashboards everywhere. Not so today.
westajay 15y ago
This reminds me of Gerstner's OS/2 move with IBM in the early 90's. Does anyone have insight into why Palm (pre & post HP) struggled to get the hardware right and remove glitchy behaviour from the OS?

437 points by canistr 15y ago

Glad we told them we weren't interested in developing apps when they contacted us on April 15. I eventually had a phone call with the fellow who emailed us, and I explained to him HP was doomed. He told me they were sure they could be a strong third! Here was the original email: Hello, I am part of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Development team that focuses on engaging one-on-one in strategic relationships with leading partners for webOS app opportunities. I wanted to touch base with you to see how things were going with your "APP NAME REDACTED", and also discuss with you our plans for HP’s upcoming webOS tablet launch. If you have some time, it would be great to connect to share where we are headed, and also hear more about your mobile strategy. Let me know when you’d be available and I can schedule a call- I hope to speak with you soon.

rsanchez1 15y ago
At least they reached out to you. I kept trying and trying to reach someone at HP regarding an issue with an app I was working on for a company I assume they would have wanted on board, but to this day, TO THIS DAY, I got nowhere with HP.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

emehrkay 15y ago

I still want someone to couple webOS with great hardware and dev tools.

canistr 15y ago
I do too but it's no good if HP owns all the rights and patents. Not to mention all the developers.
recoiledsnake 15y ago
Hardware seems to have be panned but are the dev tools bad?
- knotty66 15y ago
  The dev tools are good.

drgath 15y ago

I'm astonished that they aren't even going to bother selling it off. With the Google/Motorola merger, surely one of the Android partners has to be feeling a little uncomfortable right now. Hell, Motorola was always rumored to be working on its own JS-based OS because it didn't like the position of relying only on Android.

recoiledsnake 15y ago
Who would buy it? HTC or Samsung? Nokia? The OEMs are worse at making OSes and dev ecosystems than even HP which has experience making a UNIX based OS. And it's not as if buying WebOS will stop the patent attacks, in fact, it may increase them. They would simply be better off with Android/Windows 8 for tablets As Nokia's CEO said, it's a battle of ecosystems now, not devices anymore. Maybe RIM's next, either for a takeover, or a failure.
- robterrell 15y ago
  Who would buy it? How about the bidder who lost out, Apple? http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rim-google-hp-palm-2010-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rim-google-hp-palm-2010... One year later, I'm sure whatever it was Apple saw in Palm (patents, according to the above article) is still there.
  - nl 15y ago
    Oh please.... An unnamed source claimed something that the article itself says there's a bunch of problems with this idea and we are supposed to believe it? It was more likely a rumour that someone at Palm was putting around to try and push the price up, and the "source" believed it.
roc 15y ago
More surprising than not selling it: why not just send webOS out with the consumer PC spinoff? There's probably not a high-margin future for it but surely it would be an asset for a consumer company.
15y ago

A-K 15y ago

Tragic. It makes me wonder: Now what is Jon Rubinstein's future at HP?

vbone 15y ago
Doesn't matter. He led the destruction of what could have been a great product.
- canistr 15y ago
  I guess the writing was on the wall when their UI designer left for Google.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
jfruh 15y ago
I'm guessing none? Probably his future is counting the money he made for himself and Palm shareholders 16 months ago in the buyout.

shaggyfrog 15y ago

So does Microsoft come a-calling with a bag with a giant $ on it, and suggest coming back to Windows? Does Google dangle Android? Or does this mean HP is getting out of mobile altogether? If so, that's a huge mistake, given the state of the market right now. Especially if they are spinning off the PC side of things, what's left for HP? Printers?

orky7 15y ago
if they buy autonomy($10 billion) then they are definitely in enterprise solutions.
jaydz 15y ago
HP is moving deeper into the Enterprise business. First with hardware and now with software. Are they trying to clone IBM or SAP?
- roc 15y ago
  It looks like IBM with a side order of overpriced corporate IT hardware solutions as well. (PCs/Servers/Printers)
  - archangel_one 15y ago
    Sort of like what IBM used to be before they sold their hardware division to Lenovo, then.
forgotAgain 15y ago
Apotheker wants to make HP the next SAP. I guess he misses being there.
- mbesto 15y ago
  Which is amazing considering the time it would take to create a brand new piece of software. Unless of course they buy one... SalesForce, Infor maybe?
15y ago

jemeshsu 15y ago

HP should open source webOS.

RexRollman 15y ago
I agree. I think it could make for a very interesting desktop OS, if done right.
reemrevnivek 15y ago
Agreed! Android is Linux + Java, Chumby is Linux + Flash, webOS is Linux + Webkit ( and iOS is...different). Definitely prefer the webOS option, and there aren't that many other permutations. Unlike the other options, webOS is composed of two open source projects. What prevents someone from knitting them together, with a little hardware interfacing? Would it be legally problematic to attempt to make an OS that was compatible with the existing webOS apps?
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Well Java was supposed to be open source, too, until Oracle sh!t on it, that is.
rbanffy 15y ago
Such a move from a CEO that just canned the whole thing after paying 1.2B to acquire it? Not likely.

recoiledsnake 15y ago

Are they going to make Windows 8 tablets? >HP’s wording up above leaves things a bit vague, with at least two potential routes left open: licensing webOS to others Why would anyone license something that's basically stillborn even with a company as big as HP pushing it? Obvious choices for OEMs seem to be Android or Windows 8. Sign me up for a $150 Touchpad at the firesale if there is one(resisting temptation to call it the Ouchpad like a headline did). That's how much I am willing to spend for the latest OS with no future joining the ranks of good-but-dead ones like Amiga and BeOS.

RexRollman 15y ago
I have the feeling that, if they are getting out of the PC business, they're probably getting out of the tablet business as well.
emehrkay 15y ago
If the hardware were $150, someone will figure out how to put honeycomb on it
- cpeterso 15y ago
  Maybe HP can slap Android on the TouchPads they haven't sold? :)
trun 15y ago
WebOS has always been the most impressive mobile OS IMO, it's just never had a competent owner or decent hardware to back it up. I hope they do something with it. This, of course, is coming from one of the suckers that paid $599 for a Touchpad on launch day, so take it with a grain of salt.
- jessedhillon 15y ago
  Coming from one of the suckers who bought a Palm Pre two years ago and is still using it (gotta love contracts!), I see nothing redeeming about WebOS. WebOS was Palm's Potemkin village -- a shallow attempt to convince a larger, dumber company that they were relevant enough to warrant a buyout, by creating the appearance of a technically impressive achievement. Apart from technical merits, of which there are only a few and they are debatable, one of the values of an operating system is the commitment of the company behind it -- and with clowns like Palm and HP who stopped issuing updates only months after launch, I say fuck them and any carrier who allowed these pieces of shit to pass technical acceptance. The only reason I've hung onto this thing for 2 years is because I'm determined to make this the phone that loses Sprint my business.

ConstantineXVI 15y ago

The TouchPad launched on 7/1 in the US; 48 days ago. By a strange coincidence, that's how long it took for the Kin to be cancelled as well.

recoiledsnake 15y ago
Kin brought some decent tech to the scene but was heavily hampered by Verizon requiring a full cost data plan for a phone that was aimed at teens. Also was an abject failure of the Danger acquisition by Microsoft, so lets see how Google/Motorola does.
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  Danger was a bit of a different scenario; the Sidekicks[1] and Kin were actually made by Sharp and Motorola, and Microsoft dumped Danger's OS for a WinCE derivative (not to mention the rumblings of being kneecapped by the WP7 team and such). Motorola does their own hardware, they already use Android exclusively, already had a working relationship with Google (Droid, Xoom), and Google doesn't seem intent on totally absorbing Moto like MS did Danger. [1] Or Hiptops, depending on if you're in Magenta territory or not
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    I don't see how having WinCE as the OS hurt Kin's chances in the market after it shipped? I am with you on the kneecapping from the WP team though. >Motorola does their own hardware, they already use Android exclusively, already had a working relationship with Google (Droid, Xoom), and Google doesn't seem intent on totally absorbing Moto like MS did Danger. That's a really hard tightrope walk for Google. The last one to try this model of both making hardware and licensing the OS was Apple during the nineties and we all know how that ended. They need to make money from Motorola (currently it's at breakeven) to justify the purchase price for shareholders, but without pissing off the other OEMs like Samsung/HTC. I am not saying it can't be done, but it's very very hard.
    - 15y ago

RexRollman 15y ago

It is amazing to me that of everyone who has made tablets, only Apple seems to be successful at it. Maybe it is just like someone said recently: there is no tablet market; just an iPad market.

scorpioxy 15y ago
I don't think that's right. The Motorola Xoom seems to have done ok, and so did the Samsung tablet. HP never exerted any effort into its tablet. It released a faulty device just to catch up with the rest of the vendors releasing devices. I believe that the next wave of Android tablets will be awesome, so the next generation from Motorola and Samsung. HP doesn't seem interested.
- olivercameron 15y ago
  You mean the same Motorola Xoom that may have sold as few as 25,000[1] units? 1. http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/229402272 http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/22...
  - scorpioxy 15y ago
    That article also says "number of Xooms sold between 25,000 and 120,000". And don't forget that the price was very expensive at launch. My point was that saying the one true tablet is the iPad is false but HP is the wrong player to consider.
    - olivercameron 15y ago
      Even if it's 250,000 sold, that's still not even a dent in iPad sales.
  - xp84 15y ago
    Also, two of those Xooms are gathering dust here at work. We got them intending to write Android versions of the iOS apps we were making... The iPads were fought over, but one of the Xooms ended up in a file cabinet for a few months, and the other has barely been touched either. I feel sorry for those things. The only thing a Xoom is really good for is disappointing your kids on Christmas morning.

spitfire 15y ago

Wow. That was incompetent. Talk about ignoring your OODA loop. Who is the new guy running HP these days? Had HP been smart they would have stayed in the tablet business and aggressively integrated it with their software stack. Letting customers buy HP from end to end, sort of like Apple. They've just handed Apple a much easier path into the enterprise market - which they don't seem to be wasting.

mrich 15y ago
Apotheker is the CEO, and he strikes me as the wrong CEO for this company. This decision is bad, and I am not surprised it is being made during his tenure. He is a guy who is good with cost savings, but lacks in vision.
- forgotAgain 15y ago
  I think he agrees with you. The solution he has come up with is to turn HP into a company he is the right CEO for. No hardware, more ERP type software. Shades of SAP which is where he was before HP. Not a great business plan if you ask me. You see it a lot in sports: change all of the players to match the new coach's plan rather than adapting the plan to fit the players you have. Usually they stumble around for a few years during the "turnaround" and then repeat the cycle with the next coach.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Another CEO did the same thing. Steve Jobs when he came back to Apple. Jobs brought in his own team and basically just kept the Apple name. Seems to be working so far.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - masklinn 15y ago
      On the other hand, Jobs had founded the corp, had an almost mythical aura and the previous executive team had spent a decade fucking up Apple. Oh, and he refocused the company on its original core business, where Apotheker is moving HP away from its historical roots.

soapdog 15y ago

wtf?!?!?!? HP Pre 3 just launched on Palm Europe??? this makes no sense

j_col 15y ago
Speaking as someone who ordered one within Europe as soon as it was released directly from Europe, I'm frankly disgusted by this news and disgusted with the execs at HP. Will never buy one of their products again.
- ja2ke 15y ago
  They're solving that by no longer releasing products.
  - j_col 15y ago
    Printers? Software?
    - ja2ke 15y ago
      True. Sorry for my lame, sarcastic hyperbole.

anigbrowl 15y ago

I didn't expect my prediction to come true quite that fast: RIM and HP are the big losers here; I can't see any reason to buy into the Blackberry OS or WebOS from either a consumer or business point of view. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879195 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879195)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Apocryphon 15y ago

And then there were 2 and a half.

lukifer 15y ago
Blackberry counts as a half? Seems high.
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  I was thinking of Windows Phone 7. Maybe WinPho 7 + Blackberry is half.

martingordon 15y ago

HP spent $1.2B to acquire Palm a little over a year ago. According to Google Patents, Palm is the assignee in 12,000 patents. If HP can sell off the Palm patents for the same $/patent as Google is paying in their Motorola acquisition, they would net $8.8B. It's a sad day for innovation when patents are worth more than the product they back. Why wouldn't HP kill off webOS? How long would it have taken them to make $7B in profits off of webOS?

recoiledsnake 15y ago
I think we are quickly approaching a point of patent detente. Google needs to get a few more patents and indemnify Android OEMs and maybe lob a few lawsuits at Bing etc. and MS will quickly cross license. Same against Apple.
- sleight42 15y ago
  Detente? Between the big contenders, perhaps. The up and comers are still very much at risk.
  - olefoo 15y ago
    And one sign of a "mature market" is that barriers to entry rise. So for the big players the game of patent poker is the price they pay to keep the innovations down to a dull roar and to "manage the competitive environment", for actual innovators It just means that the slope is steeper, and if they are at all successful they will attract predators like Lodsys/IV. And while a few more entrepreneurs getting ground into hamburger by lawyers isn't that big of a concern in the larger scheme of things; it does mean that innovation in the tech sector is tamed and that we lose out on great products that never get a chance to compete in the marketplace.
    - sleight42 15y ago
      Mature? It's artificially stymied and partially stagnated by the external imposition of ignorantly granted government monopolies.

checoivan 15y ago

I don't think HP is throwing the towel, just not putting all eggs in a single basket. They know now how big a challenge is to turn it around on the tablet market. Cloud's the thing now so they're also getting into it.

anigbrowl 15y ago
Yeah, they're also selling off their PC division and buying Autonomy (records management industry leader from the UK) for $10 billion. Overpriced IMHO.
18pfsmt 15y ago
I'd rather see them come out brandishing the Palm brand, and acquiring Fon, and then going after a "home cloud" machine. We could use the "unlimited" home connections we already pay for that are often pretty good (<40ms latency, at least 2mbps up). Handling the home-router firewall in a simplistic way seems to be the best way forward.

taylorbuley 15y ago

HP just created itself the perfect reason to open source WebOS and throw a disruption cocktail at Google and Apple

floppydisk 15y ago
I'd love to see a true "open source" mobile operating system make an appearance. However, I don't think HP has a track record of magnanimity when it comes to open sourcing expensive acquisitions IP.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  No corp is going to open source their proprietary technology when they stand to make money from selling it. There won't be an open source mobile OS, the best we can hope for are OSes with browser shells (Boot 2 Gecko) and html5 as the platform.
  - xp84 15y ago
    > when they stand to make money from selling it. Really? Seriously? Who would buy WebOS today? I'm all ears. I'm sure HP is too. Not only has it failed to gain a foothold under two separate companies, there is no successful licensed (more than $0 cost) mobile OS on the market today. You have two vertically integrated (AAPL and RIMM), and one free one (Android). Windows Phone is not as much of a failure as WebOS, but that doesn't exactly make the job easier for WebOS's next owner. It just means they have to fight even to be #3. Come to think of it, open sourcing the whole thing could be a good move. It's the Netscape strategy all over again. It wouldn't really make HP any money, though, so they won't.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      There are more buyers than just those who aspire to compete with the big dogs. WebOS has application far beyond just mobile OSes. Even PalmSource was sold and Garnet OS was in development until just a couple of years ago. There are thousands of potential buyers that have nothing to do with the smartphone wars.

thought_alarm 15y ago

I wonder what they're going to do with the hundreds of thousands of unsold units. Bury them next to the pile Atari E.T. cartridges, I suppose.

msie 15y ago
Or next to the Apple Lisas. Or the EV1s.:-(
- thought_alarm 15y ago
  Actually, Apple sold out their Lisa stock after they rebranded it "Mac XL". Turns out there was a market for a "professional" Mac with an internal hard drive back then.
aninteger 15y ago
They could try selling them. They never even released the Pre3 in the USA. I'm still waiting to buy.
- tiles 15y ago
  I was. Are you still planning on getting a Pre3 in spite of the announcement? I could deal with a smaller number of apps; but now I'm worried there simply won't be any apps at all for the ecosystem.
  - aninteger 15y ago
    I'm still sort of considering it. I already knew there wouldn't be many apps. That's actually fine for me because I'm buying it for the sole purpose of developing for. I use C/C++ and libSDL (which has support on all the major phone systems) for development. I don't use that many apps actually. Typically I just use a web browser, an ssh client (yes I actually SSH out from my phone often), and the odd solitaire card game every once in a while.
georgemcbay 15y ago
Landfills are so 80s. woot-offs are where not-so-successful consumer electronics go to die these days (and I say this as a big fan of woot, and bargain basement priced semi-abandoned technology).

rbanffy 15y ago

Apotheker behaved in a truly managerish way...

floppydisk 15y ago
Or he's just further proof that most CEOs at large tech corporations seem to be lacking in the "vision" department.
Apocryphon 15y ago
I can't believe he backpedaled so much. This is backstab territory against the webOS community.

steveb 15y ago

Apple's path of disruption continues. I hope they open source WebOS, but they will probably sell it for the patents based on what MMI got from Google. I wish Nokia would have bought Palm. Expect the PC market to be disrupted next by Apple with Macbook Airs sucking up all the profits, and iOS devices crimping unit growth. Who is going to stick their neck out to make single-digit margins on a Windows 8 tablet?

pedalpete 15y ago
I agree the Macbook Air is an incredibly compelling hardware product placing the low-end mac in the same market as the high-end pc laptop. However, in the mid-to-low end, your average Windows machine is still significantly cheaper than a similarly equiped Mac. Expect PCs to still own the low-priced market. I'm not sure where you get your 'single-digit margins' comment from, but what are the real options for hardware manufacturers? You can't make a product without an OS, and your options are Android and Windows. I for one prefer a Windows device (WP over Android anyway). There is a market.
- steveb 15y ago
  HP gets about 5-6% operating margin on PCs: HP personal systems group: http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1598003&highlight= http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-n... Personal Systems Group (PSG) revenue declined 3% year over year with a 5.9% operating margin. Dell had $2.9 billion in consumer sales, $ 73 million profit: http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/fiscal12q2_release.aspx http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/fiscal12q2_relea... Meanwhile, PC sales are declining in the U.S. and Europe. So it's a slow/negative growth market with small profits. Virtually all of the (non-Apple) profit in the PC market accumulates to Microsoft and Intel. Windows costs around $50, that means that even if they could make a tablet as cheaply as Apple, they would still make significantly less profit. And there is no evidence at all that anyone can compete with the iPad right now.
- xp84 15y ago
  > Expect PCs to still own the low-priced market True. Until the generation who is now about 10 grows up and starts driving the PC buying decisions. They'll have been using tablets for 8 years or so and will think nothing of writing a paper on a tablet (bluetooth keyboards being easily available, although kids who have had smartphones since before puberty may end up being just fine typing everything on touch screens) and consuming all their media on a tablet and their smartphone. No bulky laptop required. What does a laptop add, from the point of view of a consumer? The ability to choose from a wide range of anti-virus software and browser toolbars? So when they go to college, they will see a bargain basement PC laptop with Windows 10 Home Basic Limited Edition (~$600) or an iPad 11 ($500), or an Android "Vanilla Custard" tablet ($449). Which one will they choose? I don't know, but I know it's not the crappy laptop. AAPL is positioning themselves in anticipation of that day, I have no doubt about it. They intend the iPad to be the "best" tablet the same way the iPod was the best MP3 player, and by 2007 everyone seemed to own an iPod. Once people are ready to let go of PCs the same way we let go of floppies, CRT monitors, and dial-up modems, they will be positioned as the smart choice.

barista 15y ago

Inevitable decision. It's really hard to do complete stack unless you are completely comitted to it like aaple is. It was always going to be an uphill battle for HP and I am glad they realized this sooner than later. I said this before. Nokia did a smart thing by adopting a third party software and leveraging their position in hardware to get a good bargain in return.

bradly 15y ago

HP sent me a TouchPad a couple weeks ago and after the first 2 days I haven't touched it. It just didn't seem like a finished product. I got errors and buggy UI interactions regularly. It lacked mature apps for basic usage like reading ebooks. Also, the screen rotation sensor is really sensitive so it almost always needs to have the orientation locked. A couple things I did like about the TouchPad over the iPad: shift key on the keyboard to access special chars easier and downloading apps without being thrown out of the App Store.

canistr 15y ago
To be fair, WebOS released version 3.2 which was apparently suppose to fix a lot of bugs that were there at launch in 3.0.
- raganwald 15y ago
  “I went out for dinner with someone new, but my date was late to pick me up, the car was uncomfortable, the place I was taken had terrible service, and I had the runs after eating the food there.” “Yeah, but your date has learned a lot from taking people on dates like that and most of that stuff has been fixed. How about another date?” Not making fun of your factually correct statement, obviously, just pointing out that in many cases you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.
  - canistr 15y ago
    I disagree. Consider people's first impressions of the iPhone when the iPhone 2G launched, or of Android when the G1 launched, or how almost every Blackberry device has launched with buggy firmware requiring users to update the OS only a couple of weeks after launch. You're picking and choosing a specific example when, if you recall everyone else, it was pretty much the same thing. Buggy software was the sole reason why the TouchPad or even WebOS failed.
    - ssmoot 15y ago
      I don't know anyone personally who thought the original iPhone was anything less than The Jesus Phone.

ww520 15y ago

Is perseverance a passé in business these days? Everything has to be instant success? What happen to build the product slowly over time?

anigbrowl 15y ago
It's like Cisco and the Flip, isn't it - pure market plays, zero technical vision or willingness to go over the market'snhead to consumers. That said, HP never had a compelling vision for the mass market anyway.
lukifer 15y ago
No one seems to remember that it took the iPod 3-4 years to take over the MP3 market. HP also bungled by not offering a 7" model, and not competing on price from the very beginning, even if it meant running at a loss to chase market share.
zmmmmm 15y ago
Agreed. You have to wonder how they ever thought they would succeed if they were going to give in this easily. Any fool could see it was going to be harder than the effort they've made so far. It was always premised on pushing WebOS on all their PCs and other strategic ways to promote it ... none of which ever got even tried.

voyou 15y ago

They're also selling off their PC division, and buying Autonomy (http://www.autonomy.com/ http://www.autonomy.com/), who produce search and data-mining type software. I assume this is an attempt to re-focus on enterprise back-end stuff; this is a pretty big part of their business already, so I can see how this move might make sense.

ansy 15y ago

It appears this kills any chance of another manufacturer picking up webOS. If HP can't make it work why should anyone else try? Hindsight is 20/20. Google and Palm could have made a deal. At least then the WebOS team could merge with the ChromeOS team. And Google would have that patent trove for a bargain price. And an in-house manufacturer, too, if that's what it wanted. Too late for that now. At best Google will get the patents at a significant premium. ChromeOS is too far along to benefit from WebOS. And now Google has Motorola, what would it do with Palm's hardware?

saturdaysaint 15y ago

I wonder if WebOS will be attractive to any of the handset makers that harbor suspicions about Google/Motorolla - HTC? Samsung (call it Bada 2.0?)? Sony? - It strikes me that Apple could make a lot of money by making cheaper (sub $1,000) MacBooks now that the competition is running scared. If they could sell a 2010 white Macbook for $900 (which I presume would still have a respectable margin), you wouldn't see a PC on a college campus and they'd even make a compelling case for a bigger enterprise push..

nvictor 15y ago
googoolora :) i'm quite fond of that new name.
xp84 15y ago
> wonder if WebOS will be attractive to any of the handset makers As much as I hate Android and am friendly toward WebOS, and would like to see it make inroads, there's still the problem to solve of getting third party developers. Asking all the companies that make the apps that sell devices to develop for more than one or two dissimilar platforms is very hard. Sure, you can get a few, like Facebook and the others who have WebOS apps already, or you can count on an enthusiastic developer base to write grassroots replacement apps when the "big guys" snub your small platform. But you're not going to sell John Q Public with "We have dozens of apps and more are added every month!" Now, though you can't SELL them when you have few apps, you CAN bribe, and that's how Android clawed its way out of last place and into the lead. The only way to get those WebOS phones into enough hands to get developers to take notice and see it as a must-support platform is to give away the phones. Free with contract. That's the ONLY way. And this late in the game, it'd have to be free plus heavy marketing support.

revorad 15y ago

"Since I'd been very young HP had been the highlight company for engineers" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRmG72LBU8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRmG72LBU8 I wonder what Woz thinks now. It must be a sad day for many HP engineers.

Splines 15y ago
What sort of stuff are they doing now? In the consumer's eye, they make mediocre printers and PCs. In my university days I happily used a HP calculator and scope, in addition to HPUX. Are those businesses still going strong?
- joezydeco 15y ago
  The calculator group was shut down, an HP division in Australia tried to revive it a while back. I think the HP calculators that are still being sold are done by a Korean OEM.
- sciurus 15y ago
  Who makes better printers? I've always been a fan of HP due to their work on HPLIP.
  - Splines 15y ago
    Perhaps I was unfair - that's just my perspective of the current state of affairs. I've used some HP printers and some non-HP printers in the last few years, and the HP ones did nothing to stand out of the pack. I guess what I mean to say is that HP just seems like yet-another consumer electronics company. It isn't apparent to me if people have brand-loyalty to HP in the consumer segment.
asmithmd1 15y ago
That HP is still very much alive in their spin-off of lab and testing equipment, Agilent Technologies Inc

dman 15y ago

This is karma coming back to bite Palm for doing nothing with the BeOS rights.

dgregd 15y ago

One thing I do not understand. These HP and others CEOs earn millions monthly. So they are not stupid. How many desktop _platforms_ survived? Two. Windows and MacOS by miracle. So why they think that the world needs more than 2 or 3 mobile _platforms_? Why they think is it possible to beat Microsoft / Nokia / RIM / Samsung with already collapsed company? Why they bought Palm? What was the thinking? Or maybe they are personally making money with acquisition like this. Similar to CEOs from banking when they led whole financial sector to the cliff.

SwellJoe 15y ago
This logic could have been applied to Android. There were numerous "leading" mobile operating systems when Android launched. Likewise for Apple launching the iPhone and iOS. Sometimes, a company has to bet they can beat the competition, or we get stuck with the same old crap, forever.
- wallflower 15y ago
  Dug up this vintage article on the all-in bet that was the iPhone http://counternotions.com/2008/07/16/bet-iphone/ http://counternotions.com/2008/07/16/bet-iphone/
bodyfour 15y ago
If they had successfully turned WebOS into a major player in the phone/tablet market it could have been a business worth tens of billions. It's perfectly possible that they thought "there's a 90% chance that this will fail, but it's still a smart gamble" The part that surprised me is that they're apparently killing off the hardware entirely. I'd assumed that their fallback position would be to become another Android manufacturer and at least make use of the Palm hardware expertise they bought. I guess they don't even think they can make a go of it in that market.
donw 15y ago
Stupid, no. Cowards, yes. I haven't seen a bold, risky move out of HP since... well, since they bought Palm and announced full-steam on WebOS.

blinkingled 15y ago

http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/HP_Q3_2011_earnings_call http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/HP_Q3_2011_earnings_call Height of vague cluelessness in the non-answers. Scary given the impact of the announcements. "all outcomes are possible, including a potential non-transaction" [about the PC business spin off ] - Why announce anything right now then? "How will you make webOS profitable? A> We expect the dev expenses to come down dramatically -- down to 1 or 2 cents per share a quarter. If you look at the run rate losses there, you can attribute them pretty much to Palm" -- i.e. we will make it profitable by killing it!

p0ppe 15y ago

Ari Jaaksi, HP's SVP in charge of webOS and services had an interesting tweet 40 minutes ago; "We will continue webOS platform full speed! #webOS"

xp84 15y ago
#goingdownwiththeship?

mathoda 15y ago

If you're an HP engineer working on webOS, given the commitment level your execs have to that platform, why wouldn't you jump ship? Startups, Apple, Google, Facebook, even Microsoft, may benefit in terms of human talent.

protomyth 15y ago

This is one of those times I wish Red Hat (or another Linux company) had the money to buy WebOS from HP. It would make a very interesting standard UI.

sciurus 15y ago
They're developing GNOME 3 at a much lower cost. Not that they seem to have any interest in the consumer market.

azth 15y ago

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14584428 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14584428 "HP is recognising what the world has recognised, which is hardware in terms of consumers is not a huge growth business anymore," said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of YCMNET Advisors. "It's not where the money is. It's in keeping with the new CEO's perspective that they want to be more in services and more business-oriented."

hollerith 15y ago
Makes sense when you consider how little consumers pay for new computers (and quasi-computer things like tablets) compared to 10 or 20 years ago.

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donw 15y ago

Once again, HP proves that the collective vision of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is so long-dead that the tombstone has crumbled to dust. I'm gutted. Genuinely. When I was younger, before Fiorina stepped up to be the first to rape the corpses of the founders, I was a massive fan of HP. My first graphing calculator was an HP48G, which taught me the joys of Lisp... well, Psil, because it came with Reverse Polish Lisp. WebOS could have been the resurrection of that culture -- fully JavaScript development environment, app development across multiple mobile and tablet platforms with a single environment... just genius. It's sad to see that vision evaporate, along with some of the novel telephony and interactive features that made WebOS a joy to work with.

ra 15y ago
That's exactly how I feel; WebOS is everything I want in a tablet platform. Seriously HP, how do you expect us to trust you next time you woo us to develop for your platform? Maybe there won't be a next time.
- Steko 15y ago
  I wonder if one of those nervous Android licensees will pick up the WebOS assets as a hedge. It's a shame Nokia didn't have the balls/foresight to buy Palm, they could have been shipping gorgeous Nokia crafted WebOS phones for the last couple quarters instead of getting slaughtered by Android et al.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > next time you woo us to develop for your platform? What next time? HP jumped off a cliff. There will be no next platform. Not from them.
chaostheory 15y ago
I can't help but think of MS in this situation. It reminds me of MS breaking into the video game console market and fighting really hard to stay in it. Even after a major hardware snafu that cost them an estimated 3 billion dollars they kept fighting. After six years of work, it's finally doing well. WebOS was worth fighting for and it was in better shape than the 1st and 2nd Xbox IMO. What a waste.

teyc 15y ago

HP couldn't solve the chicken vs egg problem. An upstart OS from an established company is still an upstart OS. With MS launching their Windows tablet in the near future, HP will have to run very hard to establish their positions before the MS onslaught. The journey to iPad started with iPods and iTunes, then iPod touch apps, then iPhone and finally iPad. Steve's brilliant insight is that a music device with a computer is a computer, and outflanked the music industry and Microsoft in one fell swoop. Even today, MS still can't ship a music store on the PC. PS What Google did right was to give away the OS early on, and that allowed the Shenzhen manufacturers to produce the iPeds that swamped the low end markets. I don't know if this is going to work out in the long run, but installed bases is important if you want a developer ecosystem.

jsz0 15y ago

Is this a practical example of how Google's strategy with Android is just a bit anti-competitive? Neither Palm or HP could have seriously considered licensing WebOS to compete against Android because neither has a gigantic advertising business to subsidize the cost of development. On the flip side of that how is Palm or HP going to compete with companies like Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc who are getting their OS for free? If they skip the costs to develop their own OS and go with Android what differentiates an HP tablet from a Samsung tablet if they're running the same OS? All roads lead back to Android. You either use it or you can't compete against it.

fpgeek 15y ago
Android has its pluses and minuses. It isn't impossible for a platform with license fees to compete with that (see Nokia and WP7, for example). If HP can't find a way to package webOS to compete with Android (either directly or license), that is HP failing in the competition, not Google being anti-competitive.
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hollerith 15y ago

Does anybody here think that Microsoft will publicly concede defeat in the smartphone business like HP did today at any time in the next 4 years?

recoiledsnake 15y ago
Like they gave up on the XBox while bleeding billions?

nQuo 15y ago

I feel that one of the main problems with webOS is that many people like it a lot for the design and want to see its potential unleashed. Yet users don't vote for webOS with their wallets and developers don't make webOS apps, because many question whether it can be a sustainable mobile platform. Another reason is that the hardware running webOS has always been a bit of a let-down. On a side note, I can't help but wonder if Steve Jobs feels a little saddened to see HP's lack of vision and commitment nowadays to make great products. Yes, HP's obviously a major competitor but mostly in the PC industry where it makes much slimmer margins. Jobs' first summer job was at Hewlett-Packard and also where he met Steve Wozniak, so it's more of a personal sting to witness the once iconic company giving up on post-PC devices.

jabo 15y ago

Only yesterday I received this email from a HP.com email address. "Hello, I am in business development with the HP Touchpad group and we are recruiting apps to be ported to our Touchpad Platform. I saw your app on the chrome store and wanted to reach out to gauge the interest. Since the Touchpad supports both Flash and HTML5, our technical team believes that porting your Scribble and Pixza Lite apps to our platform should be fairly easy. We have support resources, MDF, marketing programs, and loaner devices to assist the effort. I would be happy to do a quick call to explain things further. Thanks," xxxxxx

nnutter 15y ago

WebOS was so close to being amazing. I can only hope they pull off something amazing with HTC or Samsung making the hardware. On the other hand if Apple makes a 7" tablet I won't even have a major reason to look elsewhere.

watmough 15y ago

This is really sad. I would have liked to have seen webOS carve out a decent niche against Android and iOS, especially seeing that application development could be largely JavaScript-based with C++ for the high-performance parts. Commiserations to all the people that worked on webOS.

jp 15y ago

I think the PRE2 is a great device. Google Apps email, SMS texting and Google Maps is fantastic. Browser works great. The clever status light, the window swiping, the bottom gesture panel logic and the clever window bundling makes Android and Bada feel completely retarded. Very good over the air software updater. Pointing that out since Bada is very dumb in that department and requires a huge iTunes like application. The HP CEO is either retarded or scared. Like... I got an HP laptop and an HP phone... and suddenly this is not cool enough for HP because of some premature, rushed to marked, tablets ? Disclosure: I have received a few developer phones over the years.

Luyt 15y ago

esr writes in his latest Smartphone Wars[1] installment: "WebOS, we hardly knew ye [...] WebOS has looked terminal to us for a long time. [...] WebOS didn’t suck, technically speaking. It was certainly better constructed than the turd-with-frosting that is WP7. [...] The cool thing about WebOS was that its architecture was beautiful. [...] WebOS’s problem was that the coolness stopped there. The source was closed, with all the usual bad effects including higher defect rates and lower developer interest. [...] Some sort of larger shakeout seems to be going on. [...] RIM is next to the wall, probably. WP7 should already have been terminated for extreme failure (Samsung’s own-brand Bada OS is actually outselling it[2]) [...] It might be that Android, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM are now entering scorpions-in-a-bottle time. [...] There can be only one... major incumbent. A whale, with a minnow or two in its shadow. Maybe Android should invert the Twitter fail whale into a success cetacean?" [1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3611 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3611 [2] http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Samsungs-Bada-outsells-Windows-Phone-in-Q2/1313075608 http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Samsungs-Bada-outs...

jamieb 15y ago

Some companies don't seem to have caught on that we are in a recession. People don't have the money to just go out and buy the latest cool gadget. No more one-upping friends. No more trying out the latest toy. In a bygone age HP Touchwhatsits would be littering Hummer H2 dashboards everywhere. Not so today.

westajay 15y ago

This reminds me of Gerstner's OS/2 move with IBM in the early 90's. Does anyone have insight into why Palm (pre & post HP) struggled to get the hardware right and remove glitchy behaviour from the OS?