“Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman says it’s only a matter of time before the company returns to the smartphone business it all but abandoned 13 months ago,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for AllThingsD.
“In an interview that aired on Fox Business News today, Whitman told correspondent Liz Claman that in many places around the world, phones are the first computing device that people own, making HP’s lack of participation in that segment a glaring absence,” Hesseldahl reports. “[Whitman said], ‘We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device. You know, there will be countries around the world where people may never own a tablet, or a PC or a desktop. They will do everything on the smartphone. We’re a computing company; we have to take advantage of that form factor. … We did take a detour into smartphones, and we’ve got to get it right this time. My mantra to the team is: ‘Better right than faster than we should be there.’ So we’re working to make sure that when we do this, it will be the right thing for Hewlett-Packard, and we will be successful.'”
Hesseldahl reports, “HP, you’ll remember, acquired Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion, not long before its then CEO-Mark Hurd departed. Under his replacement, Léo Apotheker, HP sought to apply Palm’s webOS operating system to a tablet that it hoped would challenge Apple’s iPad. It didn’t work out that way and Apotheker shuttered HP’s webOS hardware operations in August of 2011. Whitman, who replaced Apotheker 40 days later, ultimately decided that the webOS software was better off in the hands of the open source community, and is working on an OS called Enyo.”
Read more and watch the videos in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, “doing it right” doesn’t mean knocking off Apple’s industrial design and trampling all over Apple’s trade dress, like HP routinely does with their shiteous Windows PCs. Jony Ive doesn’t work for you, you hacks.
Related articles:
HP blatantly copies Apple’s iMac, Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad designs – September 10, 2012
Apple is killing Dell and Hewlett-Packard – August 6, 2012
HP ‘designer’ on HP’s MacBook Air clone: ‘Apple may like to think they own silver, but they don’t’ – May 9, 2012
didn’t she spent tens of millions just to lose the elections in CA?
now she’s going to spend an enormous amount of HP’s manpower
and money just to loose again in smartphones wars
go and figure her out HP CEO
HP is the company where Steve Wozniak worked and during that time HP management refused Woz’s apple 1 five times, looks like the management / leaders in HP are useless at using their talented engineers in the old days and even currently. These engineers at HP should try to get a job at apple where there will be better opportunities for them
Let’s be fair about this. The Apple 1 was pretty far from being a product that HP could profitably manufacture and sell, and as it turned out, Apple only sold handful of them. It’s not like Woz offered them the Apple ][ with his amazing floppy controller. HP’s management at the time made the right call.
-jcr
i am grateful HP refused Woz’s Apple 1, this is why we have Apple as we know it. But what i was getting it is that HP management lacks vision now just like they did in the apple 1 era. HP did Steve Jobs, Woz and us apple users a great benefit by not having vision.
Whitman said: ‘We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device.”
Whitman is triple wrong on her statement above:
1. Simplest PCs are still likely to be cheaper. Subsidies are the only thing making smartphones appear “cheap”.
2. Smartphones are not smart unless you easily integrate with other computing devices you already have. Hence you need…Microsoft unless you go the route of Apple and create an entire OS ecosystem…time consuming.
3. Balmer said at least one thing right, it takes developers, developers, developers: which takes an OS and development tools to EASILY create apps.
HP is going to have a major bust unless it can create an entry level ecosystem in a short time period that can expand. Even then, I wonder if they can make it. If they “make it”, it will most likely be “made in Asia”, sold in Asia and have the largest source of developers in Asia in order to reach the low hanging fruit of new, low income, low rent smart phone buyers who don’t get subsidized.
They spent 2 billion on buying Palm and WebOS. Why don’t they start there? Of all the other OSes out their for smartphones (besides iOS), I think WebOS had/has the most promise. It, in my opinion, even has some things that I’d like to see in iOS. It was fluid, powerful, looked great, good multitasking, etc. In other words, I think they have a great smart phone… they just have to manufacture it. While I won’t be leaving my iPhone, I’d love to see what HP could do with WebOS should they REALLY put their minds to it.
The money they spent on Palm is a sunk cost, and WebOS isn’t in the same league as Android, let alone iOS.
HP does have the wherewithal to create a truly competitive mobile device OS and development system, but their senior management doesn’t seem to be aware of it.
-jcr
Who want’s to buy a phone from some that thinks they HAVE to make one, kicking and screaming the hole the way.
I want to buy one from someone that is inspired and driven to make a great product.
Oh, and NEVER tell them what you are GOING to do, just do it, and brag about it once it is done.
We are WAY past the point where anyone will put off a purchase because they think HP might make one.
Whitman must find some amazing inspiration but I fear that Apple’s prowess isn’t just on building superlative-winning products but Apple also absolutely controls the supply chain. A monopoly in a market cannot be used to inhibit competition but monopolizing the supply chain to inhibit competition is as legal as sunlight. HP, Microsoft, Sony, Google not only lack talent on the innovation side of things, they just don’t understand the importance of a supply chain with no weak links. This is why Steve Jobs chose Tim Cook, he not only gets the product side, where Ives excels, he is the world’s top expert in supply chain management.