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This is the company that killed a hardware platform 2 months after it's release. I dont think I'll be hitching my horse to this wagon.

by sjs382 15y ago

raganwald 15y ago
I was going to post a similar comment, but after consideration, I think it’s important to understand that different markets have different imperatives. When selling to consumers or startups, you get one-off revenue from each sale. Unless you are selling a locked-in phone plan or you are MSFT extracting a legacy tax on upgrades, you can't take a high lifetime value per customer for granted, you have to keep earning your revenues. If something isn’t working, therefore, you can cut and run. You aren’t throwing revenues away. With enterprise products, OTOH, you lock them in for years, maybe decades. Long after you stop making new versions, you are still selling support contracts and charging for minor bug fix releases and ports. They are locked in tight and can’t easily move to another vendor. So you have a much bigger incentive to stay the course even if something isn’t taking the world by storm: Those customers that do buy have a large lifetime value. I’m not saying I buy into whatever snake-oil Leo is selling this week, it’s pretty obvious he has no credibility when it comes to announcements about what HP will or won’t do, but I admit that walking away from a consumer product doesn’t exactly mean that they’d do the same thing to a platform that might sell to the Enterprise.
- dmethvin 15y ago
  Sure, HP dropping their tablet was like Microsoft dropping the Kin. That's not the part of the story that scared corporate America. It's the simultaneous news of HP telegraphing their exit from the PC market without any clear exit strategy. Clueless consumers may still shell out for HP PCs at Best Buy, but corporate buyers will not touch them when their future is in doubt. That means the HP sales person is not hanging around the office quite as often, and can't offer killer bundles and deals that include hardware. Yes, IBM managed that transition, but I don't see any indication HP can successfully implement the same vision -- especially when competing against an established and organized IBM.
  - raganwald 15y ago
    +1 for noting that a vague exit from the PC business is entirely unlike dropping the tablet. Weirdly, dropping the tablet might be dropping the “next big thing” that might be the disruptive innovation to their own business, but of course the Enterprise is not interested in disruptive innovation.
binarymax 15y ago
HP is shifting to a software firm...so yes, while killing off a hardware platform taints their reputation, I think this platform goes along with their new strategy. That being said, I won't be hitching my horse to this wagon either.

This is the company that killed a hardware platform 2 months after it's release. I dont think I'll be hitching my horse to this wagon.

by sjs382 15y ago

This is the company that killed a hardware platform 2 months after it's release. I dont think I'll be hitching my horse to this wagon.

raganwald 15y ago

I was going to post a similar comment, but after consideration, I think it’s important to understand that different markets have different imperatives. When selling to consumers or startups, you get one-off revenue from each sale. Unless you are selling a locked-in phone plan or you are MSFT extracting a legacy tax on upgrades, you can't take a high lifetime value per customer for granted, you have to keep earning your revenues. If something isn’t working, therefore, you can cut and run. You aren’t throwing revenues away. With enterprise products, OTOH, you lock them in for years, maybe decades. Long after you stop making new versions, you are still selling support contracts and charging for minor bug fix releases and ports. They are locked in tight and can’t easily move to another vendor. So you have a much bigger incentive to stay the course even if something isn’t taking the world by storm: Those customers that do buy have a large lifetime value. I’m not saying I buy into whatever snake-oil Leo is selling this week, it’s pretty obvious he has no credibility when it comes to announcements about what HP will or won’t do, but I admit that walking away from a consumer product doesn’t exactly mean that they’d do the same thing to a platform that might sell to the Enterprise.

dmethvin 15y ago
Sure, HP dropping their tablet was like Microsoft dropping the Kin. That's not the part of the story that scared corporate America. It's the simultaneous news of HP telegraphing their exit from the PC market without any clear exit strategy. Clueless consumers may still shell out for HP PCs at Best Buy, but corporate buyers will not touch them when their future is in doubt. That means the HP sales person is not hanging around the office quite as often, and can't offer killer bundles and deals that include hardware. Yes, IBM managed that transition, but I don't see any indication HP can successfully implement the same vision -- especially when competing against an established and organized IBM.
- raganwald 15y ago
  +1 for noting that a vague exit from the PC business is entirely unlike dropping the tablet. Weirdly, dropping the tablet might be dropping the “next big thing” that might be the disruptive innovation to their own business, but of course the Enterprise is not interested in disruptive innovation.

binarymax 15y ago

HP is shifting to a software firm...so yes, while killing off a hardware platform taints their reputation, I think this platform goes along with their new strategy. That being said, I won't be hitching my horse to this wagon either.