A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm

I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd's scandal, "the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."<p>Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities.

I tend to agree with the basic reasoning but there's one thing I don't understand.<p>Why cancel the TouchPad? Why not just spin that out with the hardware business to Compaq (which is the idea, yes?)? It seems they've devalued that unit by killing WebOS.<p>All PC makers are on razor thin margins... apart from Apple. A post from yesterday [1] painted an interesting picture where Dell, through a series of seemingly rational decisions, essentially taught Asus the PC business, allowing the Taiwanese manufacturers to eat US PC makers for breakfast in later years.<p>[1]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907187" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907187</a>

WebOS was for Hurd just a fig leaf to make a future orientated impression, in reality were all the profits he made short term.<p>What HP needs now is focus and that is what Apotheker is doing. Some people are disappointed that it is not consumer orientated, but when you look at the "smart phone wars" this seems reasonable to me. HP can't compete with Google, Apple and Microsoft there. Look at Nokia and Blackberry.

I have no faith in HP's leadership.<p>I was talking to an insider last year about how HP wanted to be a computer maker. I said, "I know them for their printers, they make awesome printers." He said, "Yeah, they're not so interested in printers these days. They think the money's in computers."<p>I guess it's whatever the "money's in" this week.

The HP board made the decision, and I am surprised that nobody has yet made the link between Andreessen's editorial in the WSJ (he sits on the HP board) and this recent shakeup.

HP has a highly distinguished board of directors. I find it strange that no one is highlighting the fact that Léo Apotheker is definitely enjoying the vote of confidence of the top level executives, otherwise this would have never been possible.

HP also wants to be in the cloud. After the past week I think they've killed that as well. Who would lock themselves in to HP at this point?

That's stating the obvious. Another question would be, why was Apotheker hired? Whoever did that must have expected something like that?

I guess this is why the vision of the CEO matters so much to investors (think Jobs). But regardless, HP was in trouble. I wonder if they would have stayed in the hardware business even if Hurd had stayed on. Maybe WebOS was not long for the company regardless of who was at the helm; its unequivocal success notwithstanding, maybe it'd have been abandoned anyway.

This quote: "Autonomy — a company I’d never heard of before but which more or less sounds like a rival to SAP" tells you everything you need to know about the blogger. He knows very little about the software business, and is just making up opinions based on his gut feeling, without backing it up with knowledge or evidence.

Just because Hurd decided to bet big on WebOS - it doesn't mean that bet was ever going to pay off. Gruber is correct and HP and Apotheker are going along with their plan as intended. The tablet/phone business was a long shot and their PC business over time was going to get weaker, they don't own the OS and hardware is tough to compete in with Chinese manufacturers. Their best shot at long term survival was enterprise software, and that's what they are doing. Perhaps they could come up with some kind of enterprise solution for WebOS in the future, but it's probably not their focus right now.

<i>"Autonomy — a company I’d never heard of before"</i><p>Autonomy is a leader in their field

I don't see what the big advantage is of CEOs few have heard of being dragged in to nuke existing companies and rebuild them in the image of the old company he used to work at. Why not just nuke the company out of spite (or alternatively sell off all assets and give to charity if not spiteful) and have the CEO stay at the old place and keep doing the same thing. Same outcome but not as painfully dragged out.<p>Obviously if you keep doing multi billion dollar acquisitions, and then trash it all and fire everyone a couple years later when you switch CEOS, and then when things get even worse, fire that CEO with a golden parachute and bring it his cousin to do it all again, pretty soon your company headquarters are going to be an abandoned grassy field.<p>Talk about burn rate!

It's really too bad. I really wanted webOS to gain some traction but now that HP has all but killed it, it seems incredibly unlikely that webOS will be anything more than a footnote in history.

Wow ... first time I'm agreeing with Gruber whole-heartedly.

walmart - sold out<p>target - sold out<p>best buy - sold out<p>online hp shop - sold out<p>office depot - sold out<p>amazon - ripping off customers with original price<p>newegg - rip off also<p>where am i gonna get my touchpad future android mega device? ;(

Atleast now HP now has a pretty valuable portfolio of patents of Palm

fireball is a visionary genius

Autonomy is nothing like SAP. What a ridiculous, empty post.

He's never heard of Autonomy so therefore assumes it's similar to SAP? Hmmm.