“Hewlett-Packard Co. is planning to announce the acquisition of Autonomy Corp. for about $10 billion and the spinoff of its personal-computer business, said people familiar with the company’s plans,” Jeffrey McCracken, Serena Saitto and Aaron Ricadela report for Bloomberg. “The company may announce its plans as early as today, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t yet public.”
McCracken, Saitto and Ricadela report, “Hewlett-Packard has been aiming to lessen its dependence on PCs, where growth has stalled as consumers flock to smartphones and tablet-style computers like those made by Apple Inc.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: HP’s recognition of the Post-PC era?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
It’s amazing how apple can buy small tech companies for chump change and vastly improve their product, while apple’s competitors spend billions to make bolt-on frankenmesses.
HAH! Well put.
“It’s alive! It’s alive!”
Now it’s dead…
Excellent comment.
As in the upcoming Google FrankenPhone.
Hint: It’s afraid of fire.
“Hewlett-Packard has been aiming to lessen its dependence on lower-margin PCs, where growth has stalled as consumers flock to tablet-style computers like those made by Apple Inc. (AAPL)”
Where by “tablet-style computers” they mean “iPads.”
So much for the Palm acquisition.
Actually, in the wake of Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, I’m thinking HP will *keep* webOS, and license it to the spun-off PC company.
Which would free them up to license webOS to others.
HP, the king of mediocrity. This is the epitome of HP’s lights out management.
3 … 2 … 1 … bloodbath
sounds like HP thinks they are IBM, now.
Who the heck is Autonomy? (OK, now I know they’re a UK software vendor.) How curious. Hewlett Packard bought Compaq which earlier bought Digital; now HP is selling off the whole lot. (I wonder if that includes servers. If it does, they’re left with little beyond printers and services.)
They are keeping the servers, giving away the printers and selling the ink cartridges at scandalous prices.
Yeah, it would have been nice if MDN had included that in their excerpt, rather than making readers click the link to learn more about Autonomy. Would also have made the “rationale” of HP’s action make more sense.
What a perfect week*. Now I only wait that Dell declares bankruptcy.
(*Android is no more =MotoGoog, HP spins off their PC manufacturing, Apple is biggest in China…)
HP should go back to the calculators, even their current laser printers ( as compared to the 5MP) are the Cheapest Crap.
I an surprised that the blogosphere has not commented that too much credit has been given to tablets for the dip in PC sales. I think that smart phones likely has more impact than tablets so far. Look around and see how many people have let their smartphone become their umbilical cord to what is important to them.
I disagree. The biggest drop in PC sales is in the netbook segment, where those sales have dropped severely as iPad sales keep increasing. There’s only so much you can do on a smartphone due to the small screen size and typing area, whereas an iPad can replace a netbook entirely.
They should give the PC spinoff a catchy name, something like… oh, I don’t know… Compaq.
Seems everyone now wants to get into vertical markets, I would guess because of Apple’s success with providing the whole deal. It will be fun to watch. Especially Google as they start to forsaken all their “partners.”
This also looks like part of HP’s strategy to get away from Microsoft and Windows dependence.
I wonder what took them so long. HP should have started investing in a non-Windows operating system 5 or 10 or 15 years ago. They probably would have a good product today if they had let a small team of developers spend years working on it.
If this keeps up Microsoft will have to buy one of the remaining PC manufactures just so it has someone to sell Windows X to in the future. The Chinese may one decide Windows is to expensive and look at Linux or even Google.
They have been pushing in that direction for some time now. China has its own Linux distribution.
Its called Red Flag Linux.
I’m sure its pre-rigged for censorship and all sorts of ‘data logging’
you know… power to the people man.
Looks like they just announced they are also getting out of the tablet/handset business too.
“Hewlett-Packard will discontinue its line of products running its WebOS operating system, including TouchPad tablets, the company also said in a statement today.” Paragraph 2 in the Bloomberg article.
They just paid $10 billion for a software company that may report only $1 billion in sales. Trying to outdo Google? WTF.
I thought this was the block-buster sentence in the article. Are we to understand HP is dumping WebOS?? Wow!! What happened to Number One Plus?? That is a ridiculously quick retreat from the tablet battlefield – and sort of a shame. WebOS is a pretty good mobile OS – certainly better than Android.