Shows how much I know: HP kills the TouchPad
Earlier today (well, technically yesterday, since it’s gone midnight here), I said HP should stick it out alone, create great hardware and software, not licence webOS and attempt to out-Apple Apple. Turns out HP doesn’t have the stomach for that; instead, it’s killing the TouchPad and, judging by the other changes to its business, is instead going to attempt to out-IBM IBM. Yeah, good luck with that—I hear IBM has quite a head start.
Still, Apple had a head start, too, but then most people who’d used webOS thought HP could nonetheless make a mark. On Twitter, Lukas Mathis said:
Tablets will make up a huge part of the future PC market. HP had one of the best horses in that race. This will be known as HP’s worst move.
It’s certainly bad for HP, regardless of where it goes next; James Kendrick says why:
HP in one day tanked any trust it had built up with customers for years. I wouldn’t even buy a printer cartridge from them now.
I’m sure James won’t be the only one. And yoinking an entire platform that’s barely bedded in? Eddie Smith has some wise words on that:
The indirect message sent by HP today: If you buy a non-iPad, you might be buying abandonware.
I was hoping for more of a fight from HP. And with Microsoft nowhere, maybe commentators claiming we’ll eventually end up in an Mac OS/Windows-style result in tablets, but with Google’s Android in place of Microsoft, aren’t quite so far off—although the numbers and balance, clearly, won’t be terribly similar, unless Apple makes the iPad 3 out of papier mache and twigs.
I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks this is good for HP? HP has clearly made a decision in selling both its PC and WebOS business to cease being a consumer brand, and to concentrate on what I think has long been its core business (which certainly is not the cut-throat low-margin business that consumer computing (with the exception of Apple) has become).
It seems to me that HP has long been competing with both IBM and Oracle (SUN) in the enterprise computing environment, and while it may be smaller than IBM or Oracle, I don’t see that business collapsing to just 2 significant players either.
Note that Apple, with its consumer focus, seems to be maintaining just enough server business to provide the unique server software required to support Apple’s consumer-facing products.
@Randall: In an overall business sense, it perhaps works out as the right move, but it certainly knocks confidence and trust about HP as a whole, along with making you question its commitment.
And don’t forget the ridiculous premium hp is paying for Autonomy – now also one quarter of the current HP market cap. That ought to tell you something aobut their odds of success with the latest flavor-of-the-day strategy.
a rather naive article on ars technica surrounding this http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/08/a-sort-of-pc-how-windows-8-will-invade-tablets-and-why-it-might-work.ars?comments=1&start=80#comments-bar