“Not just to get into the fast growing smartphone industry, but to end its reliance on Microsoft Windows as the basis for its hardware gadgets,” Frommer writes. “This is an ambitious task, and could obviously have a big payoff if it’s successful. HP will invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the project, and will certainly make some noise.”
But the odds of this working are very low, and HP’s plan will probably not be successful,” Frommer writes. “The problem is that WebOS, despite its nice user interface and some nice technical qualities, is a failed platform. Consumers haven’t found a need to buy Palm devices instead of Apple or Android devices… And, as importantly, developers haven’t found a need to develop for WebOS, either. Without unique apps, there’s no reason to have a unique platform.”
Frommer writes, “So the odds are likely that HP’s big bet will be a flop, and that it’ll have to go crawling back to Windows or Android, whichever is the dominant consumer electronics platform in a few years.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, goody, we get to use our new quote already: “HP’s acquisition of Palm means that not only is HP sick and tired of being stuck with and dependent upon perpetual laggard Microsoft, but, more importantly, yet another smartphone/slate PC OS will live to confuse the market. This will significantly benefit the one company that has repeatedly proven its ability to distinguish itself above all others: Apple. The more confused the marketplace, the faster customers will flock to Apple’s trusted brand and quality products.” – MacDailyNews Take, April 28, 2010, 4:45pm EDT
Don’t worry, in a year or two HP can write off the $1.2B acquisition as a bad business decision when they close the Palm business unit.
And our new product, the HP tablet – guess what? It syncs with iTunes by imitating an iPod 😀
Watch that fail…
I wonder if they’ll discontinue Palm’s current product line and simply come out with new products based on WebOS?
@ zmarc – Good point, Palm’s made a bad name for themselves on the hardware quality front. And HP probably wants their own logo, not Palm’s, on any new webOS smartphones, tablets, etc.
Is that a new MDN record? 105 minutes from quote to requote? IMPRESSIVE!!
They’ll put a blue-gray case on it, and hold it up at CES and say it represents HP innovation. Then, Dvorhack will say that HP’s Pre/Pixi will outsell the iPhone.
MDN: You NAILED it!
Good job, as usual.
Then hopefully the government and the tax payers will bail out hp, because they didn’t realize it wouldn’t work.
Me thinks this is HP’s way of getting a software division. I’m more inclined to believe they are feeling the pressure in the PC business, and want to be able to offer vertically integrated products across the board, not just an iPhone or iPad competitor.
For whatever it is worth, which might not be much, I think they want to develop an OS X competitor as well.
HP or some Palm spokesperson will come up and say;
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2010, is the two- year anniversary shipment of the iPhone 2008,” (insert idiot spokesman here) said today in an interview in (pick your city). “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
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I don’t agree. There will be room for 3 competitors in the mobile O/S arena. Obviously Apple will come out on top, but of the 3 systems still standing Web O/S is the best choice. Windows Mobile will die a slow death and after the lawsuit dust settles Droid will be rendered irrelevant. A company like HP has the resources to build Web O/S into a decent competitor. Whether they can execute or not is the real question.
And HP will have the additional expense of supporting Palm Pre and Pixie owners, at least for the duration of their two-year wireless contracts.
HP should stop selling Pre and Pixie immediately, because they are perceived as being failed inferior products, and do whatever they plan to do with WebOS in their own unreleased products. My guess is that it will serve as the basis for the OS used in there tablet computers. Windows 7 will never cut it (in terms of efficiency) to work effectively in small mobile devices with limited performance and power resources. And I don’t see HP entering the mobile phone market, although I supposed it’s possible just to copy Dell’s moves.
This reminds me a bit of HP’s foray into selling HP-branded iPods. They never took it very seriously, and the “experiment” soon ended (very quietly).
I wonder if HP will find a way to charge for replacement cartridges. That’s their money maker business, innit?
Yup didn’t take the ‘experts’ long to see that this is a show of no confidence in what is supposed to be HP’s new bestest buddy Microsoft by being primed to show off the capabilities of Windows. Despite all that making up they have done this last few years too, obviously absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder after all, more chairs go flying in Redmond.
At least they’re familiar with Jon Rubinstein and his work.
Rubinstein’s predecessor, Ed Colligan: “”We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
HP should never have bought Compaq. It wasn’t the hardware (which was good) but the culture (which was dishonest, greedy, fly-by-night from top to bottom). At the time it seemed that HP was making an illuminated decision keeping so many Compaq personnel – in hindsight it was a disaster of the worst order: legal scuffles at boardroom level, disastrous and antagonistic dealings with the HP channel, and the complete loss of the high ethical standards inherited from Messrs Hewlett and Packard.
HP only survive by ripping customers off with outrageously high priced toner and ink. They won’t be able to do that forever… As for “HP Invent” – they must have been reading Microsoft’s product development manual…
You can see why they want to get into smartphones. You can see why they realise they can’t do this with Microsoft, or Google… But they will be so late to the party, and Apple is so fleet of foot, that the situation looks hopeless for HP…
Still, they’re not spending their own money, are they….
Wow! Carnac the Magnificent would be proud!
“The more confused the marketplace, the faster customers will flock to Apple’s trusted brand and quality products.”
That’s the reason there was never an iPod killer. That’s why there won’t be an iPhone/iPad killer.
More competitors in the market only makes Apple stronger.
What’s not being addressed is that HP could take WebOS and turn it into a nice tablet OS, which not only frees HP from Microsoft, but also gives HP a quality OS that will run acceptably well on ARM processors for a tablet.
HP also could make WebOS relevant. Let’s face it, many people did not buy the Pre when it first came out because a) Sprint was the exclusive carrier, and b) people didn’t believe Palm would survive, and therefore their phone would be unsupported.
Palm simply didn’t have the money or time to build up a developer base like Apple did. Palm also relied on Web Apps, which Apple was killed over when the first iPhone came out. Palm also didn’t deliver its SDK until very late in the game, at a time when it was already obvious that the Pre wasn’t a hit.
HP can give WebOS time to grow and catch on, something Palm couldn’t do.
May be it has nothing to do with WebOS. May be they want to get out of Windows box and start selling BeOS.
I don’t know anything about webos, but could it be used well in a tablet form? I think I read where the HP slate running windows was awful.
I think it would be great if they are able to shuck MS
An interesting juxtaposition I noted today:
John Gruber: “The easiest way HP could screw this up is by not committing fully to WebOS for all mobile devices — phones, handhelds, tablets.”
HP VP of Strategy and Corporate Development Brian Humphries, talking about Windows Mobile: “We intend to continue to be a strategic partner for Microsoft. They’re a huge piece of our business today, and will continue to be so.”
Uh-oh.
@Gabriel
Well, probably not “uh-oh”. HP-speak is always spin… And being an “HP strategic partner” means nothing at all – ask any HP partner who went from “strategic” to “disposable” when HP decided to grab channel business for themselves…
HP would say that – Microsoft is a big partner, and HP would hope to dud Microsoft before Microsoft dudded them…
In the end it is immaterial. HP is a corporate-aware business rather than a consumer-aware business. They are too late, with too little to compete in this business. More than that, HP work on a 90 day business cycle, like many other US corporations. This means it is almost impossible to implement anything long-term in the HP world – Everyone, and everything, is managed to meet short-term expectations.
By the time HP make WEB-OS do anything on an HP platform, they will have changed their mind several times about their strategy, and the people involved will have moved to other positions.
HP is no longer reflective of the business approach, and particularly the ethics, of Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard. The purchase of Compaq, and the retention of far too many Compaq cowboys destroyed HP’s raison-d’etre. If it were not for the continued willingness of corporations to pay silly prices for black powder, and consumers to do the same for black ink, HP would likely be in serious trouble…
Like attracts like? Palm is a dismal failure and HP is already dismal…
the end result of WebOS on HP platform(s) is likely to be a dismal failure… In HP 90-day windows, 8 such windows in 2 years will likely mean 2-3 changes of product leadership, and two generations of failed product before it is canned, or left to rot on the vine like HP’s other smartphone products (anyone remember the awful iPaq?)…
Gruber is right. HP knows this.
This will be considered one of the smartest purchases in tech history in 10 years. HP will come on top of the other Windows companies. HP has realized that it needs to be multidimensional. You can’t just be a computer and printer maker anymore. They may not trump Apple but they will outpace Dell and others with this move. $1.2B seems like a high price though but HP has plenty of cash on hand.