HP killing TouchPad, webOS devices

While Google was pushing deeper into mobile, Hewlett-Packard was stepping away from it. Just a month after Hewlett-Packard launched its TouchPad tablet, and two years after it coughed up $1.2 billion to acquire Palm and its webOS software, HP dropped a bomb during its earnings call: It’s saying goodbye to the tablet and smartphone world. HP has said webOS will live on in PCs and printers, but it will no longer make webOS devices such as the TouchPad tablet and the Pre 3 and Veer smartphones. The company is also considering spinning off its PC business. Engadget’s Lydia Leavitt said the move brings to mind one phrase: “buyer’s remorse.” After shelling out big bucks for Palm and taking over webOS last year, it’s “already regretting the choice, wishing it had opted for a more profitable gamble,” she said. But the “old fail-fast mentality” may serve HP well in this case, Time Techland’s Doug Aamoth argued. “In a market sector with such low margins and such little room for error—and with one fruit-themed company executing its tablet and smartphone lines so successfully just as consumers are shying away from buying full-fledged PCs—it’s almost certain that HP saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out before things got worse,” he said. In other words, with Apple’s tight grip on the market—and no end of its dominance in sight—HP needed to get out while it could.
 
Does this mark the beginning of a post-PC era? InformationWeek’s Kurt Marko said that’s still up for debate, but it’s obvious that the “new, new HP, the (CEO) Leo Apotheker edition, wants nothing to do with consumer products.” HP’s statements during its earnings call highlighted that fact. “Consumers are changing the use of their PC,” Apotheker said. “The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations. The velocity of change in the personal device marketplace continues to increase as the competitive landscape is growing increasingly more complex especially around the personal computing arena.” TechCrunch’s MG Siegler pointed out that while HP is the worldwide leader in PC sales, the company’s actual profit from those sales has already been far surpassed by Apple. And while overall PC growth continues to decline, Apple’s Mac sales keep growing and are outpacing the rest of the PC industry. “The big picture item of today remains what HP is no longer doing: making post-PC devices or even PCs themselves,” Siegler wrote. “In less than the span of a year, the biggest PC maker in the world realized not only that they couldn’t be Apple, but that they couldn’t even compete with Apple.”

• Pioneering Firm Bows to ‘Post-PC World’ (WSJ)
  
• HP To Apple: You Win. (TechCrunch)
  
• HP Kills TouchPad, Puts WebOS in Hibernation (Wired)
  
• Hewlett-Packard’s abdication: What hath Apple wrought? (Fortune)
  
• WebOS Enters Third Act Of Its Fight For Mobile Relevance: What’s To Come? (paidContent)
  
• HP Says ‘So Long’ to WebOS Devices (PCWorld)
  
• Editorial: Engadget on the death of HP’s webOS devices (Engadget)
  
• The New, New HP: Infrastructure In, Consumers Out (InformationWeek)
  
• Why HP Is Getting Out of the Consumer Game (Time Techland)
  
• HP’s Stunning Moves Bode Ill for the PC Industry (PC Magazine)
  
• HP CEO: Shutting down WebOS ‘difficult but necessary’ (The Washington Post)
  
• HP’s future prospects: A look at three scenarios (ZDNet)