According to AllThingsD, Hewlett-Packard CEO, Meg Whitman, told the French newspaper Le Figaro that if iPads count as PCs, something that research firm Canalys believes, then Apple will probably pass the computer giant to become the world’s top personal computer vendor.
Whitman was quick to state that HP will try to retake the crown in 2013.
HP held a company wide meeting on Tuesday, to tell workers… well, absolutely nothing. In the meeting, HP CEO Meg Whitman told employees that the company still does not know what it is going to do with webOS, and that a decision will not be finalized for another three to four weeks.
“It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” Whitman told employees. “If HP decides to do this, we’re going to do it in a very significant way, over a multiyear period. It’s a very expensive proposition, but HP can make that bet.”
Once upon a time in 2010, HP purchased a little company called Palm for the (bargain?) price of $1.2 billion dollars. Flash forward through a failed attempt at mobile devices and HP is left with a considerable investment and no current plans to use it. It’s the technology equivalent of all dressed up with nowhere to go.
So now, with a Meg Whitman at the helm as their new CEO, HP has to make some tough decisions on which products and services they want to stick with and which they want to abandon. Given the success of their other product lines, if the possibility exists to recoup some of their investment costs, it may make good sense to offload webOS. If rumors are to be believed, Oracle is offering HP this possibility.
So with only 11 months of being at the HP helm under his belt, Léo Apotheker has been removed as CEO of HP. Meg Whitman has been named as his successor, bringing with her the kind of technology vision that helped her successfully lead a little company you may have heard of once or twice: eBay.
Some are criticizing Whitman’s background, indicating that a career established by selling Beanie Babies and collectables has ill prepared her to deal with the corporate consumer climate at HP. In the end, she found her market and catered to her target audience. I’m not sure that HP would be poorly served by selling more consumer products, so I fail to see where the problem is there.
If you missed out on those sweet $99 TouchPads like I did, then you may be happy to hear that Hewlett-Packard is planning on releasing a few more.
According to its blog, the response to HP’s mega cheap tablets was overwhelming, and TouchPads flew off of store shelves with record speed. Thanks to the huge demand, HP has decided to produce a final run of TouchPads, though the exact date for the release is still unknown.
If you missed out on Hewlett Packard’s (HP) recent fire sale of their now-discontinued TouchPad, you have a chance to try again. The company has just announced that it has decided to resume production of the tablet, at least for one final run.
The Guardian UK reported that the company decided to add more TouchPads to the market after the huge response received for the price-slashed tablet. Earlier this month, HP drastically reduced the price of its TouchPad to $99- $149. PR Rep Mark Budgell, in an HP blog post said, “Since we announced the price drop, the number of inquiries about the product and the speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning. I think it’s safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response.” It’s amazing what an 80% price cut can do for sales.
DigiTimes recently reported that Samsung Electronics has recruited Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) ex-vice president of PSG marketing Raymond Wah to handle the company’s PC sales. Samsung has been rabidly deflecting any rumors that it plans to buy out HP’s computer department, and although this move does not prove the rumors, it certainly shows that Samsung is interested in the goods.
It was also reported that Samsung may be interested in purchasing HP’s, now defunct, webOS. Neither company will comment on this rumor.
The sales began this weekend, making the TouchPad available for a real bargain as part of the $100 million dollar write-off taken by HP. While the initial $100 rebate seemed like a nice perk, the 16GB and 32GB models can be purchased for $99 and $149 respectively.
Those of you who may have paid more needn’t worry. HP has offered to give full refunds if you choose, or just return the balance of what you paid minus the current retail price. This is a classy move on HP’s part, removing the bitter taste many of their customers likely had after hearing the devices were being discontinued.
So what do HP engineers do when they are bored? Apparently they install their operating system on another company’s hardware. The results weren’t surprising: webOS ran faster on the iPad than it ever did on the TouchPad that it was intended for.
So did the TouchPad fail because the hardware was antiquated? Those developing for HP think so, having now indicated that their innovation was limited because of how poorly the operating system ran on the devices they had to work with. Is this the truth or are they just being defensive?
So that’s that. Not that it likely caught many of us off-guard, but HP has made the official announcement that they are discontinuing operations for webOS devices, including their phones and the TouchPad tablet.
They also indicated that they will “continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.” What does this even mean? We can only assume that they want to keep their options open given the $1.2 billion dollars they paid for this technology with their acquisition of Palm Inc. just last year.
Strategy Analytics reported today that Apple’s iOS accounted for 61% of the market share for tablet shipment in the second quarter of 2011.
According to Peter King, Director of Strategy Analytics, the global tablet market shipped 15.1 million units in Q2 2011, a more than 300 percent increase from only 3.5 million units in the same quarter of 2010.
Bloomberg reports that Hewlett-Packard’s Chief Executive Officer, Leo Apotheker, HP is currently in talks to license the WebOS mobile software.
“We are talking to a number of companies,” Apotheker said in an interview. “I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations.”
Anybody who has used an iOS device for more than a few minutes can tell you that the upgraded Notification Center in iOS 5 is beyond required. Let’s ignore that it can be frustrating to play a game and have it paused while you get an incoming text message… what about having to dismiss all of your notifications before you can end the phone call you were on while they arrived?
It isn’t only that the pop up notifications are annoying, the problem is that in order to start viewing the content you were being notified about you have to dismiss each one beforehand. This may not be bothersome for those of you who have a better memory than I do, but once I wander off to address one incoming message I’ve already forgotten about any others. Oh look, something shiny!
In a few weeks, on July 1st, HP’s new TouchPad will go on sale, with a brand new version of WebOS. In a series of newly released videos, HP shows off some of the WebOS features, and we wanted to take a closer look and let you know how WebOS compares to Apple’s upcoming iOS 5, to be released in September.
WebOS has always been a nicely featured, intuitive operating system, and it looks like the TouchPad is no exception to that rule. If you’ve ever used a device with the WebOS operating system, these features will be familiar to you, and many of them are very similar to what you’ll find in iOS 5.
Gene Munster, the managing director and senior research analyst from Piper Jaffray, was in attendance at last week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) asking 45 of the attendees a few questions regarding their development practices and scope. Munster compared this year’s results with those from a survey he conducted of 20 attendees at the same event in 2008.
Many of the responses come as no surprise considering he was polling individuals registered at an Apple sponsored conference. Overwhelmingly all respondents chose iOS as the easiest and most profitable platform to develop for.
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