“That acquisition gives HP access to webOS, a powerful mobile internet device operating system,” Mick reports. “HP is already rumored to be cooking up a webOS tablet — dubbed ‘Hurricane.'”
MacDailyNews Take: And it will connect to iTunes… er, oh, that’s right, it won’t. Well, it will be integrated tightly in many vehicles… uh, oh. But, of course, it’ll have the support of literally tens thousands of third-party accessory makers… Oh, yeah, it won’t have that either. Good luck HP.
Mick continues, “However, according to Mark Hurd, HP’s Chief Executive Officer, the company is not planning to launch or market new Palm smart phones… He adds that the company isn’t going to ‘spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn’t in any way make any sense.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: In an update, Mick reports, “According to Engadget, HP is clarifying Hurd’s comments about webOS on smartphones. Here’s the response from HP: ‘When we look at the market, we see an array of interconnected devices, including tablets, printers, and of course, smartphones. We believe webOS can become the backbone for many of HP’s small form factor devices, and we expect to expand webOS’s footprint beyond just the smartphone market, all while leveraging our financial strength, scale, and global reach to grow in smartphones.’
Translation: HP is going to let Palm’s smartphones die.
June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. – Palm-backer Roger McNamee, March 05, 2009
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. – Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, November 16, 2006, laughing off the idea of Apple entering the smartphone market.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Winston” for the heads up.]
Over at PalmCentral.net, they are in a massive denial. Thirteen pages of comments, and practically all of them are contorting that statement to mean that HP is deeply committed to Pre. It is so much fun to read! Compared to them even the most rabid Apple fanbois come off as indifferent!
Please, some of those so called “journalist” go and intreview Macnamara and Ed Colligan, It wil be very interesting to hear thier opinion now
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That was a stupid comment from HP’s CEO. What purpose does it serve to make Palm’s small but loyal user base feel like they have been abandoned? They were probably excited by the prospect of continued support from HP’s deeper pockets and new WebOS phones in the future. Is it going to make them wait to buy some future HP tablet? No, now they will probably buy an iPad. Palm Pre and Pixi are still being sold. Is HP taking over Palm’s habit of killing sales of existing products by pre-announcing future plans? Apparently…
Boom!. Out go the lights!!
This shouldn’t come as any surprise.
Palm failed with the WebOS phone. Had they succeeded, even modestly, they wouldn’t have needed to be taken over.
Now, why would HP take over Palm and continue to develop and sell phones based on the same tried and failed WebOS, especially when this market is something that they have no experience in?
My next printer will probably be an HP and it will have a really nice interactive display on it.
They are so late to the game.
Buying Palm for the WebOS they must think will quickly make them a player. They just bought a ticket to musical chairs behind windows, blackberry, android and iPhone. The number of chairs will be going down.
This is not making sense to me. You pay $1.2 billion for a shop and abandon its core product?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in a post-pc world.
He’s right. By the way… who wanted a Palm Phone…? Maybe 50,000 people… Who wants an HP Phone…maybe 50.
HP will use WebOS to make Office/Productivity Devices, and add it to its line of accessories… Stick to what they do best
If anyone has stopped using their iPhone, it can only be because they’ve spent their entire day using their iPad.
(Some days: guilty as charged.)
Knock out a few more beige boxes you shite ass Dell wannabe. Poor laser printers are about the height of your innovation. Send in the Gimp?
The big loser here is still Microsoft. HP just spent over a billion dollars on a moble OS rather than trust Monkey Boy and his minions to ever build a usable mobile OS.
In three years time the leading Smart Phones will be running iPhone OS and webOS. The leading manufacturers will be Apple and HP. The license model is doomed to failure, ergo MSFT and Google will recede into irrelevance. That leaves Blackberry and Symbian, and neither RIMM nor NOK get it
The success of Apple and HP will the focused tightly integrated software and hardware solution that runs across several mobile products. No one else is positioned to do the same thing.
Hurd better hope that WebOS will someday at least recoup the $1.2bil they spent on Palm, or this will be his Carly moment in hindsight.
HP – Hurt Palm.
I admire HP for their bold decisions. If iPhone OS were to have a competitor, let it be WebOS.
I think that at least the fact that they ditched Windows is worthy of applause.
HP doesn’t realize that they were the fools in the room.
The Venture Capital investors that financed Palm had to find
a way to get some of their money back once their investment
in Palm proved to be a failure in the marketplace.
They had to find a greater fool on whom to unload that dog;
and they found it and the greater fool is called HP.
They are like a knife catcher in real estate, proud that he
invested in a bargain, without realizing that he is the fool
the foreclosing bank had to find to get some of the money
out of that submerging asset.
HP is still unaware that they have just been used by the
Venture Capital guys to give them US$1.2 billion that they
had no other way of ever getting in any other way but from
a greater fool than they were to invest in Palm business
and earnings generating imaginary potential.
HP will stop talking about Palm one of these days when they
find out in the marketplace that their investment has no chance
to gain market share in any desirable and profitable product
category.
HP: You were the fools in the room. You just didn’t know it.
HP likely can’t stop Palm smartphones from dying.
@ disposableidentity….
With the unlimited rate plan gone, too many people may not be spending all day on those iPads. Another of AT&T;’s broken promises.
The level of denial at PreCentral.net truly is astounding. There are tons of people desperately insisting that, when CEO Mark Hurd said quite clearly “We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business”, he really meant to say “We didn’t buy Palm just to be in the smartphone business.” They’re concocting all sorts of stories about how CEOs say things they don’t really mean in public all the time. I almost feel bad for the desperation evident in their panicked denial.
I was also interested to note that HP’s “clarification” of Hurd’s comments is lacking any strong, clear statements along the lines of “Make no mistake: we are absolutely 100% committed to webOS for smartphones”. Which more or less confirms that HP are, at the very least, planning to significantly de-emphasize webOS as a smartphone platform, in favor of webOS for… printers. Now there’s a platform to write apps for.
MW: done
HP should concentrate on continuing to make rpn calculators. Still have my 12C from years ago. Perfection.
I guess we now add one more to de list…
BloodBath¡¡¡¡
What a waste. Hurd is turning into Fiorina. $1.2B for a printer interface? I heard HP had programmers once. What happened to them?
Winston back in da house!!!
Well, I’ll be back in the house tomorrow after I fly back to Philly.
You gotta love that corporate speak!
Macslut,
I’m with you!!!
I have always wanted a nice interactive display on my printer so that I can surf the web while I pri…eeerrrrr, so that I can look at pictures while I pri…eeerrrrr, so that I can read online magazines while I print…eeerrr.
Wait, why do I want an interactive display on my printer?
That $1.2B should’ve been spent on hiring programmers who know how to write real drivers instead of the bloat that comes with their printers.