End Of WebOS
Looks like HP is effectively killing WebOS while considering a purchase of a software company.
Back when Palm announced WebOS, it sounded like a solid product, but I didn’t personally pay much attention, because it was clear that if WebOS failed to gain traction, Palm was toast. There’s not much point in bothering with a product whose days seem numbered. And with no traction gained, Palm was later sold to HP.
So now that HP is hitting slower growth through increasingly margin-squeezed PC sales (the “post PC era” is nearly upon us), they’re considering getting out of hardware entirely. Smart call, because with iOS / Android taking first and second place and Win Mobile third, you don’t want to be fourth or fifth in an increasingly intense, expensive, and resource-sapping game. The rumored 200 thousand unsold pile of unsold merch at Best Buy underlines why.
But what’s funny is earlier this week we saw Google trying to turn itself into a hardware company more akin to Apple, while HP wanders in the opposite direction, eschewing hardware and hoping to become a software company more like Microsoft.
Perhaps some phone calls from Mountain View to Palo Alto are in order…
The only problem is that besides the software company HP is considering purchasing, what else would they have to offer in the way of software? Besides crappy PCs and crappy printers, what else does HP sell? Servers, I guess?
Would the remaining portion of the business be enough to keep the whole thing afloat? HP is a big company, right? If they laid off thousands of employees next week, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Killing WebOS just seems like a bad idea — it sounded like the best contender to iOS, and their best shot at breaking away from being a Wintel clone manufacturer (as they have been for years).
Don’t get me wrong, I love iOS — but some good competition would be healthy. I don’t think Apple would have overhauled notifications if it weren’t for Android, for example.
That’s definitely a problem. I certainly can’t think of any software HP excels at, either. Without computers as far as branding goes they’re a printer company.
The credit they get in the short term is for realizing the changing tech landscape and doing something about it. It’s a smart move because Apple just isn’t a company you want to directly compete with right now — Facebook, Amazon, Google are doing well as they get their bread and butter from Apple-absent areas (social, retail, web advertising) while those that compete head-on are feeling the squeeze (Dell, Nokia, RIM).
But whether or not their decision pays off remains to be seen. They might fail and merge / be gobbled up by some other company a year from now, which may in retrospect make this move seem silly. But for right now it feels smart.
I think the strategy they’re looking at is more akin to IBM. They’re going to focus on enterprise with lucrative government/corporate/large institutional contracts (cloud services, IT solutions, large system integrations, servers and consulting) and shed the less profitable consumer group (personal systems group). Presumably imaging and printing will remain intact. They also own a load of former Enterprise and infrastructure companies like 3Com, EDS
Here’s a chart that shows their revenue mix:
http://www.betanews.com/article/HP-Oracles-halt-for-Itanium-support-is-anticustomer/1313708761
At the very least, you can see they’re more than just a printer/ink company
Cede consumer and go after the less-sexy, but lucrative enterprise space seems like a reasonable strategy. Nor is it a space where either Google or Apple excel…
Good point. We’ll see what happens in the future.
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