It’s Official: HP Kills Off webOS Phones and the TouchPad(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
It’s Official: HP Kills Off webOS Phones and the TouchPad
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/18/its-official-hp-kills-off-webos-phones-and-the-touchpad/
305 comments
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Is perseverance a passé in business these days? Everything has to be instant success? What happen to build the product slowly over time?
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
"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
HP should open source webOS.
"Since I'd been very young HP had been the highlight company for engineers" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRmG72LBU8
I wonder what Woz thinks now. It must be a sad day for many HP engineers.
I wonder what Woz thinks now. It must be a sad day for many HP engineers.
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?
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?
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://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!
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!
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?
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?
They're also selling off their PC division, and buying Autonomy (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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
"We will continue webOS platform full speed! #webOS"
Tragic. It makes me wonder: Now what is Jon Rubinstein's future at HP?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
[2] http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Samsungs-Bada-outs...
"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
[2] http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Samsungs-Bada-outs...
From 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."
"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."
This is karma coming back to bite Palm for doing nothing with the BeOS rights.
I still want someone to couple webOS with great hardware and dev tools.
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.