Agilent is the REAL Hewlett Packard. The company currently called HP is just a hollow shell of its former self.
Agilent wait for hp to go bankrupt. Agilent buys the hp brand in bankruptcy proceedings for 0.01 on the dollar. Agilent re badges themselves with the hp moniker and scraps the pc line. Note: not resell it to some offshore integrator. Scrap it completely.
I remember the running joke inside circles that Carly jumped Lucent after tanking her division. It wasnt long before Lucent's debacle was public. fortunately for Carly, I think the time span at hp was just long enough to insulate her in my opinion.
No one knows what HP might now do with WebOS. It's obvious that their plans of putting it into every HP PC is dead. With that dead, and phones and tablets dead, to all intents and purposes, it's dead.
Life as an embedded OS will be very different, and doesn't really count, because the WebOS everyone knows will be almost unrecognizable as an embedded OS.
This is its farewell, as no other manufacturer will now touch it.
I disagree. Apple's prices are more competitive now than they've ever been. I don't even recommend or try to push Apple products on people anymore. Apple launches are crowded enough as it is, and it's only getting worse. I actually recommend windows, android and even webos to people I meet who I don't like, and I do it with a serious face.
Where is the innovation coming from other companies? I just see a bunch of talentless monkey copycats trying to cash in on the iPad craze, and failing miserably while trying. Apple does what it does regardless of what others are doing.
I don't buy into the "Apple needs competition to drive innovation and competitive pricing" argument. If a certain competitor is actually innovating, then fine, but the evidence tells me that most companies are not innovating at all, and some of them deserve to go bankrupt and die off. That is evolution.
haha, same here. i do it too i mean recommend windows and android all the time to the people who i don't like. and they do take me seriously.
They do make some cheap crap, but they also do nice high-end business units, like Elitebooks, and consumer Envy line is not bad at all.
Elitebooks in particular are nice units, solid industrial design, metal chassis... they are not as slim as MacBooks but they are built to comply military standards regarding dust, shock, moisture... and they are really reliable. In addition, they are easy to maintain - most of their bottom is under one big removable cover so once it is open, you have access to HDD, RAM, WLAN, BT and broadband modules, even fan is exposed so it's easy to clean dust and dirt from it.
They also all come with default 3 year nbd on-site warranty, at least here in NZ.
We have couple of 14 and 15" units in our office, and even 14" i7 with dedicated grafics never gets too loud or two hot.
I believe this article is bogus, or out of context. I wouldn't be surprised if they spin-off some parts of their business (mobile hardware, Compaq...), but giving up on PCs in general? It's one of their core businesses, their bread and butter.
It's not this article. It's what HP said. It's what the entire industry is talking about. You can go to industry sites such as Computerworld, eWeek, Infoworld and Information Week, all business sites. They are all talking about HP giving up their PC division.
HP gave some business speak today. But it was obvious that they were saying that they would sell it as a preferred option, if an offer was high enough, and if not, then they would spin it off. Other options were on the table, but what would they be? This was a major announcement. Compared to that, the killing off of the tablet and phones was a minor distraction, and HP treated it that way.
Pc's are about one third of their business, and by announcing the $10 billion purchase of a major cloud oriented software company, HP was showing everyone the direction they were taking-following IBMs' lead.
Right. So HP's strategy to capitalise on the consumers "flocking" to tablet computers is to NOT make tablet computers anymore.
WTF is wrong with large corporations? Are they so removed from consumer reality that they have no idea what's happening anymore?
This move makes it clear that HP isn't interested in consumers. IBM isn't interested in consumers. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world are names most people have never heard of.
HP has made a decision, as IBM did several years ago, to exit the consumer business, and concentrate on services, software, and heavy iron. Those are much more profitable, and consistent. I don't find anything wrong with HPs' move.
Getting rid of the hardware behind WebOS is just another move in that direction. It was obvious that WebOS was going nowhere. Why continue dumping hundreds of millions down that hole?
To what point? We're talking about how bad Nokia may do with WP7 which is got one heck of a better chance with MS behind it than this. Sony? What would they do with it? And Nintendo? Another question mark.
The problem is that this OS is dead, Dead, DEAD. No one bought it from the very beginning, and sales went down from there. The company was on its last legs before HP overpaid for it.
It would make no sense to use an OS that was so roundly despised by the public. Why not Symbian? Far more people used that, and it died anyway. yes, I know WebOS is a modern OS. But how are you going to convince people to buy it?
Why would a company spend hundreds of millions to produce new phones and tablets for something that failed spectacularly?
Then there is the software problem. Essentially no software now. And of it were off the market for more than a year, who would want to write software for it. The SDK sucked. Everything would have to be rewritten. Why would someone want to do all this?
Maybe some company will try, though I doubt it. But if they do, they're doomed.
This move makes it clear that HP isn't interested in consumers. IBM isn't interested in consumers. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world are names most people have never heard of.
HP has made a decision, as IBM did several years ago, to exit the consumer business, and concentrate on services, software, and heavy iron. Those are much more profitable, and consistent. I don't find anything wrong with HPs' move.
Getting rid of the hardware behind WebOS is just another move in that direction. It was obvious that WebOS was going nowhere. Why continue dumping hundreds of millions down that hole?
Many of the posters here seem to react more emotionally to this than logically. Nice or not, webOS was not selling in huge volumes. Consumer products have razor thin margins and volume is key!
HP correctly dumped a part of its business that was going nowhere, including PCs etc.
They are re-focusing their business on low volume, high margin items like datacenter and services. If Cisco had done that earlier they'd not be in the mess they are today.
WebOS is most likely dead, mostly because of a lack of ecosystem and with no devices out no way an ecosystem can grow.
But there are some parties which might be interested to give it a try. Intel for one (instead of software guys like Microsoft going integrated, the same can happen from the other direction, right). Sony or Sony/Ericsson or LG have a serious software problem. Nintendo might be interested to use it so it can move to the cloud. All these companies have a problem with software and are in a serious problem wrt the post-PC era.
I don't believe licensing will bring that. But one of these might turn it into a decent integrated success.
Most likely, though, this is not going to happen or if it is going to happen it will fail. So WebOS seems most likely dead.
Nice or not, webOS was not selling in huge volumes.
I think the problem is that webOS wasn't even selling in SMALL volumes...
Some of the coverage in The Register for the Best Buy fiasco reports July sales figures in the UK for the TouchPad in the region of 12000.... and for the first week of August - 100.
I was always a big fan of Palm - I've owned several of their PDAs in the past - but they blew it with the original Pre, and when they went belly up HP was never the right company to try and pick up the pieces and carry on with webOS.
As sad as it is to see what is generally a pretty decent OS (albeit still incomplete and on fairly crappy hardware regards the TouchPad!), HP are right to stop throwing money at something that is never going to work and cut their losses before it's too late.
I sure hope the people who bought one kept the receipt....
True competition comes from innovation and balls. HP has neither. Nobody is willing to put what it takes into coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing things. They'd rather copy Apple and come up with cheap crap. Don't make the mistake of calling that competition.
You cant R&D if you have no $ for it. This is why the PC business is stats in a box with no design.
I think AI should update their style guide so that the picture of Apple's new "spaceship" is appended to every article, sort of like a halo. The juxtaposition is amplified when the article in question has nothing to do with the new Apple HQ, for example, when talking about the demise of HP's webOS division.
I have provided a sample. Bathe in the magnificent light of my post! Behold the Apple Halo!
I saw it as being dead the day HP announced they were buying it. HP does not know the consumer space. I cannot think of a worse company to have bought palm to try to make a success of it.
Apple, RIM, HTC (almost anyone) could have done better. IIRC, Apple's bid included an agreement to keep webOS alive and palm operating with devices distinct from Apple's iPhone line (as a counter to the possibility that BB style keyboards would retain significant market). It's too bad Apple didn't buy them, if only for the patents that will now sit in the HP dungeon. RIM could have done well with them too, by marrying the strengths of BB with the innovation from palm/webOS.
I love Apple products, but have no problem with seeing other companies/products do well. One of the ones I would have liked to succeed was palm (or at least webOS).
I saw it as being dead the day HP announced they were buying it. HP does not know the consumer space. I cannot think of a worse company to have bought palm to try to make a success of it.
Apple, RIM, HTC (almost anyone) could have done better. IIRC, Apple's bid included an agreement to keep webOS alive and palm operating with devices distinct from Apple's iPhone line (as a counter to the possibility that BB style keyboards would retain significant market). It's too bad Apple didn't buy them, if only for the patents that will now sit in the HP dungeon. RIM could have done well with them too, by marrying the strengths of BB with the innovation from palm/webOS.
I love Apple products, but have no problem with seeing other companies/products do well. One of the ones I would have liked to succeed was palm (or at least webOS).
I would have liked to see that as well. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see it now. HP's upper management suffers from terrifically bad myopia, and all they can see is the near term. They apparently lack the capability to think in terms of platform over product, and that's why they rushed inferior hardware into the market with TouchPad, and its why they got so shaken when that hardware failed. And now they are trying to become software centric with an OS as one of their products? They obviously cannot accept the risk, nor deliver the level of commitment required... to make a platform succeed.
When you combine this noted tendency toward myopia with the fact that they have now created at least the appearance of routinely lying to their consumers, channel partners, and developers... and it makes it almost blindingly obvious that WebOS is simply dead. HP has poisoned the well such that, even if WebOS were to be acquired by someone else, it is doubtful that many developers would want to come on board and that fact alone really seals its fate.
To what point? We're talking about how bad Nokia may do with WP7 which is got one heck of a better chance with MS behind it than this. Sony? What would they do with it? And Nintendo? Another question mark.
The problem is that this OS is dead, Dead, DEAD. No one bought it from the very beginning, and sales went down from there. The company was on its last legs before HP overpaid for it.
It would make no sense to use an OS that was so roundly despised by the public. Why not Symbian? Far more people used that, and it died anyway. yes, I know WebOS is a modern OS. But how are you going to convince people to buy it?
Why would a company spend hundreds of millions to produce new phones and tablets for something that failed spectacularly?
Then there is the software problem. Essentially no software now. And of it were off the market for more than a year, who would want to write software for it. The SDK sucked. Everything would have to be rewritten. Why would someone want to do all this?
Maybe some company will try, though I doubt it. But if they do, they're doomed.
this is way too extreme a viewpoint. the same problems apply to any possible mobile OS other than iOS and Android right now. even Windows Phone, certainly Bada and QNX. and Symbian was abandoned because it was just too technically limited to be used for next generation products.
and no, WebOS was not "despised" by anyone, that is way over the top. actually, people who tried it liked it. but the complete package just wasn't there to support buying it.
HP is giving up because WebOS was Hurd's big initiative, and he's gone. the new guy has a very different strategic direction and no commitment to mobile or even hardware, let alone his predecessor's bright ideas. so whack! that's how corporations work.
yes, WebOS certainly needs to be filled out with the range of popular apps at least. but several big OEM's could take that on. and some will bring much more established global smartphone market presence to the effort than HP and Palm could, another reason they both flopped.
and the reason i think one or more will is because they HAVE to. not because they want to. but because depending on Google from now on is potential market suicide for all of them. even if just to retain some leverage in dealing with Google, they need to have some alternative in the works. and also just in case the whole Android edifice falls apart or is badly damaged next year as an outcome of all the litigation.
let's see who picks up WebOS from here before we jump to conclusions that it's "doomed."
Oh that's a trick statement! iOS is Lite! But will apple license it for those uses? Quite possibly!
I just meant Lite as in an OEM version for say a fridge or microwave where a full interface isn't needed. Apple TV is the perfect example. Just control the device from an ipad or iphone or Mac for that matter. I really hope Apple go that route.
Comments
Agilent is the REAL Hewlett Packard. The company currently called HP is just a hollow shell of its former self.
And people thought Carly Fiorina mismanaged HP.
Agilent is the REAL Hewlett Packard. The company currently called HP is just a hollow shell of its former self.
Agilent wait for hp to go bankrupt. Agilent buys the hp brand in bankruptcy proceedings for 0.01 on the dollar. Agilent re badges themselves with the hp moniker and scraps the pc line. Note: not resell it to some offshore integrator. Scrap it completely.
And people thought Carly Fiorina mismanaged HP.
I remember the running joke inside circles that Carly jumped Lucent after tanking her division. It wasnt long before Lucent's debacle was public. fortunately for Carly, I think the time span at hp was just long enough to insulate her in my opinion.
The first time I heard of HP was back in the 1970s - they manufactured electronic testing
equipment. Bell Labs was a customer then. Have they left that business?
I'm going to saaaaaaay........... nnnnnnnnnnnnyes.
No one knows what HP might now do with WebOS. It's obvious that their plans of putting it into every HP PC is dead. With that dead, and phones and tablets dead, to all intents and purposes, it's dead.
Life as an embedded OS will be very different, and doesn't really count, because the WebOS everyone knows will be almost unrecognizable as an embedded OS.
This is its farewell, as no other manufacturer will now touch it.
Why not Sony or Nokia? Or Nintendo?
I disagree. Apple's prices are more competitive now than they've ever been. I don't even recommend or try to push Apple products on people anymore. Apple launches are crowded enough as it is, and it's only getting worse. I actually recommend windows, android and even webos to people I meet who I don't like, and I do it with a serious face.
Where is the innovation coming from other companies? I just see a bunch of talentless monkey copycats trying to cash in on the iPad craze, and failing miserably while trying. Apple does what it does regardless of what others are doing.
I don't buy into the "Apple needs competition to drive innovation and competitive pricing" argument. If a certain competitor is actually innovating, then fine, but the evidence tells me that most companies are not innovating at all, and some of them deserve to go bankrupt and die off. That is evolution.
haha, same here. i do it too i mean recommend windows and android all the time to the people who i don't like. and they do take me seriously.
Not really.
They do make some cheap crap, but they also do nice high-end business units, like Elitebooks, and consumer Envy line is not bad at all.
Elitebooks in particular are nice units, solid industrial design, metal chassis... they are not as slim as MacBooks but they are built to comply military standards regarding dust, shock, moisture... and they are really reliable. In addition, they are easy to maintain - most of their bottom is under one big removable cover so once it is open, you have access to HDD, RAM, WLAN, BT and broadband modules, even fan is exposed so it's easy to clean dust and dirt from it.
They also all come with default 3 year nbd on-site warranty, at least here in NZ.
We have couple of 14 and 15" units in our office, and even 14" i7 with dedicated grafics never gets too loud or two hot.
I believe this article is bogus, or out of context. I wouldn't be surprised if they spin-off some parts of their business (mobile hardware, Compaq...), but giving up on PCs in general? It's one of their core businesses, their bread and butter.
It's not this article. It's what HP said. It's what the entire industry is talking about. You can go to industry sites such as Computerworld, eWeek, Infoworld and Information Week, all business sites. They are all talking about HP giving up their PC division.
HP gave some business speak today. But it was obvious that they were saying that they would sell it as a preferred option, if an offer was high enough, and if not, then they would spin it off. Other options were on the table, but what would they be? This was a major announcement. Compared to that, the killing off of the tablet and phones was a minor distraction, and HP treated it that way.
Pc's are about one third of their business, and by announcing the $10 billion purchase of a major cloud oriented software company, HP was showing everyone the direction they were taking-following IBMs' lead.
Right. So HP's strategy to capitalise on the consumers "flocking" to tablet computers is to NOT make tablet computers anymore.
WTF is wrong with large corporations? Are they so removed from consumer reality that they have no idea what's happening anymore?
This move makes it clear that HP isn't interested in consumers. IBM isn't interested in consumers. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world are names most people have never heard of.
HP has made a decision, as IBM did several years ago, to exit the consumer business, and concentrate on services, software, and heavy iron. Those are much more profitable, and consistent. I don't find anything wrong with HPs' move.
Getting rid of the hardware behind WebOS is just another move in that direction. It was obvious that WebOS was going nowhere. Why continue dumping hundreds of millions down that hole?
Why not Sony or Nokia? Or Nintendo?
To what point? We're talking about how bad Nokia may do with WP7 which is got one heck of a better chance with MS behind it than this. Sony? What would they do with it? And Nintendo? Another question mark.
The problem is that this OS is dead, Dead, DEAD. No one bought it from the very beginning, and sales went down from there. The company was on its last legs before HP overpaid for it.
It would make no sense to use an OS that was so roundly despised by the public. Why not Symbian? Far more people used that, and it died anyway. yes, I know WebOS is a modern OS. But how are you going to convince people to buy it?
Why would a company spend hundreds of millions to produce new phones and tablets for something that failed spectacularly?
Then there is the software problem. Essentially no software now. And of it were off the market for more than a year, who would want to write software for it. The SDK sucked. Everything would have to be rewritten. Why would someone want to do all this?
Maybe some company will try, though I doubt it. But if they do, they're doomed.
This move makes it clear that HP isn't interested in consumers. IBM isn't interested in consumers. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world are names most people have never heard of.
HP has made a decision, as IBM did several years ago, to exit the consumer business, and concentrate on services, software, and heavy iron. Those are much more profitable, and consistent. I don't find anything wrong with HPs' move.
Getting rid of the hardware behind WebOS is just another move in that direction. It was obvious that WebOS was going nowhere. Why continue dumping hundreds of millions down that hole?
Many of the posters here seem to react more emotionally to this than logically. Nice or not, webOS was not selling in huge volumes. Consumer products have razor thin margins and volume is key!
HP correctly dumped a part of its business that was going nowhere, including PCs etc.
They are re-focusing their business on low volume, high margin items like datacenter and services. If Cisco had done that earlier they'd not be in the mess they are today.
Cheap, cheaper and 'what on earth is that?' No wonder PC Sales are stagnating if thats all the wintel users have to work with.
But there are some parties which might be interested to give it a try. Intel for one (instead of software guys like Microsoft going integrated, the same can happen from the other direction, right). Sony or Sony/Ericsson or LG have a serious software problem. Nintendo might be interested to use it so it can move to the cloud. All these companies have a problem with software and are in a serious problem wrt the post-PC era.
I don't believe licensing will bring that. But one of these might turn it into a decent integrated success.
Most likely, though, this is not going to happen or if it is going to happen it will fail. So WebOS seems most likely dead.
Nice or not, webOS was not selling in huge volumes.
I think the problem is that webOS wasn't even selling in SMALL volumes...
Some of the coverage in The Register for the Best Buy fiasco reports July sales figures in the UK for the TouchPad in the region of 12000.... and for the first week of August - 100.
I was always a big fan of Palm - I've owned several of their PDAs in the past - but they blew it with the original Pre, and when they went belly up HP was never the right company to try and pick up the pieces and carry on with webOS.
As sad as it is to see what is generally a pretty decent OS (albeit still incomplete and on fairly crappy hardware regards the TouchPad!), HP are right to stop throwing money at something that is never going to work and cut their losses before it's too late.
I sure hope the people who bought one kept the receipt....
True competition comes from innovation and balls. HP has neither. Nobody is willing to put what it takes into coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing things. They'd rather copy Apple and come up with cheap crap. Don't make the mistake of calling that competition.
You cant R&D if you have no $ for it. This is why the PC business is stats in a box with no design.
I think AI should update their style guide so that the picture of Apple's new "spaceship" is appended to every article, sort of like a halo. The juxtaposition is amplified when the article in question has nothing to do with the new Apple HQ, for example, when talking about the demise of HP's webOS division.
I have provided a sample. Bathe in the magnificent light of my post! Behold the Apple Halo!
Is that steve jobs head i see underneath there!!!http://forums.appleinsider.com/images/smilies/lol.gif
I saw WebOS death coming more than a month ago.
I saw it as being dead the day HP announced they were buying it. HP does not know the consumer space. I cannot think of a worse company to have bought palm to try to make a success of it.
Apple, RIM, HTC (almost anyone) could have done better. IIRC, Apple's bid included an agreement to keep webOS alive and palm operating with devices distinct from Apple's iPhone line (as a counter to the possibility that BB style keyboards would retain significant market). It's too bad Apple didn't buy them, if only for the patents that will now sit in the HP dungeon. RIM could have done well with them too, by marrying the strengths of BB with the innovation from palm/webOS.
I love Apple products, but have no problem with seeing other companies/products do well. One of the ones I would have liked to succeed was palm (or at least webOS).
I saw it as being dead the day HP announced they were buying it. HP does not know the consumer space. I cannot think of a worse company to have bought palm to try to make a success of it.
Apple, RIM, HTC (almost anyone) could have done better. IIRC, Apple's bid included an agreement to keep webOS alive and palm operating with devices distinct from Apple's iPhone line (as a counter to the possibility that BB style keyboards would retain significant market). It's too bad Apple didn't buy them, if only for the patents that will now sit in the HP dungeon. RIM could have done well with them too, by marrying the strengths of BB with the innovation from palm/webOS.
I love Apple products, but have no problem with seeing other companies/products do well. One of the ones I would have liked to succeed was palm (or at least webOS).
I would have liked to see that as well. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see it now. HP's upper management suffers from terrifically bad myopia, and all they can see is the near term. They apparently lack the capability to think in terms of platform over product, and that's why they rushed inferior hardware into the market with TouchPad, and its why they got so shaken when that hardware failed. And now they are trying to become software centric with an OS as one of their products? They obviously cannot accept the risk, nor deliver the level of commitment required... to make a platform succeed.
When you combine this noted tendency toward myopia with the fact that they have now created at least the appearance of routinely lying to their consumers, channel partners, and developers... and it makes it almost blindingly obvious that WebOS is simply dead. HP has poisoned the well such that, even if WebOS were to be acquired by someone else, it is doubtful that many developers would want to come on board and that fact alone really seals its fate.
To what point? We're talking about how bad Nokia may do with WP7 which is got one heck of a better chance with MS behind it than this. Sony? What would they do with it? And Nintendo? Another question mark.
The problem is that this OS is dead, Dead, DEAD. No one bought it from the very beginning, and sales went down from there. The company was on its last legs before HP overpaid for it.
It would make no sense to use an OS that was so roundly despised by the public. Why not Symbian? Far more people used that, and it died anyway. yes, I know WebOS is a modern OS. But how are you going to convince people to buy it?
Why would a company spend hundreds of millions to produce new phones and tablets for something that failed spectacularly?
Then there is the software problem. Essentially no software now. And of it were off the market for more than a year, who would want to write software for it. The SDK sucked. Everything would have to be rewritten. Why would someone want to do all this?
Maybe some company will try, though I doubt it. But if they do, they're doomed.
this is way too extreme a viewpoint. the same problems apply to any possible mobile OS other than iOS and Android right now. even Windows Phone, certainly Bada and QNX. and Symbian was abandoned because it was just too technically limited to be used for next generation products.
and no, WebOS was not "despised" by anyone, that is way over the top. actually, people who tried it liked it. but the complete package just wasn't there to support buying it.
HP is giving up because WebOS was Hurd's big initiative, and he's gone. the new guy has a very different strategic direction and no commitment to mobile or even hardware, let alone his predecessor's bright ideas. so whack! that's how corporations work.
yes, WebOS certainly needs to be filled out with the range of popular apps at least. but several big OEM's could take that on. and some will bring much more established global smartphone market presence to the effort than HP and Palm could, another reason they both flopped.
and the reason i think one or more will is because they HAVE to. not because they want to. but because depending on Google from now on is potential market suicide for all of them. even if just to retain some leverage in dealing with Google, they need to have some alternative in the works. and also just in case the whole Android edifice falls apart or is badly damaged next year as an outcome of all the litigation.
let's see who picks up WebOS from here before we jump to conclusions that it's "doomed."
Oh that's a trick statement! iOS is Lite! But will apple license it for those uses? Quite possibly!
I just meant Lite as in an OEM version for say a fridge or microwave where a full interface isn't needed. Apple TV is the perfect example. Just control the device from an ipad or iphone or Mac for that matter. I really hope Apple go that route.