[freudling]

You may laugh but this could be a brilliant business move by HP. A play for the ages. I heard about 2 million TPs have been fire saled over the past 2 days. HP: they're basically giving away these units to force marketshare. It will, in turn, hurt iPad sales in the short term, as well as partially damage the perceived value of the $499 tablet. All this will give the new webOS lincensee the running start they need.

Whether you like it or believe it, webOS has marketshare in the tablet space now.

[freudling]

BREAKING

HP offers 4G TP teaser on site, makes statement about massive demand after the price drop, and has sign up form to be notified when more units are available.

"TouchPad, starting at $99". Right on HP's site. They've got some balls.

[Kerrigan]

I've been on the fence about getting a tablet. I drove around looking for a TouchPad today and was going to buy one, but couldn't find any.

Edit:



I doubt that's going to come to fruitiion, freudling.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by freudling 

You may laugh but this could be a brilliant business move by HP. A play for the ages. I heard about 2 million TPs have been fire saled over the past 2 days. HP: they're basically giving away these units to force marketshare. It will, in turn, hurt iPad sales in the short term, as well as partially damage the perceived value of the $499 tablet. All this will give the new webOS lincensee the running start they need.

Whether you like it or believe it, webOS has marketshare in the tablet space now.

Seriously, are you on drugs ?

The is so stupid, I don't even know where to start.

HP just lost BILLIONS of $$$ (loss on TP sales, write-off of webOS IP, probably tons of raw material inventory and contractual agreements, layoffs etc...)

Steve Jobs is having a serious laugh attack right now.

-t

[freudling]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Seriously, are you on drugs ?

The is so stupid, I don't even know where to start.

HP just lost BILLIONS of $$$ (loss on TP sales, write-off of webOS IP, probably tons of raw material inventory and contractual agreements, layoffs etc...)

Steve Jobs is having a serious laugh attack right now.

-t

Then you stand by the fact that it's stupid. We'll check back here in a few weeks and see who is right.

By the way, my understanding is that the 4G model is new, just posted. And I highly doubt Steve Jobs is laughing. HP is damaging the tablet market value with these prices, and soaking up MILLIANS of users in a matter of a few days. I don't think anybody has done anything like this on this scale in business before. Sickdeals has over 3 million hits in 24 hours over this. People are biting.

In addition, HP is RESTOCKING TouchPads for online sales starting this Monday. Imagine how the little bit of PlayBook sales are going to hurt.

[Shaddim]

Well, they charged my card and sent me an email. It's shipping out Monday. Can't wait to run some Android goodness on it... after screwing around with WebOS, of course.

[Langdon]

Originally Posted by freudling 

Then you stand by the fact that it's stupid. We'll check back here in a few weeks and see who is right.

By the way, my understanding is that the 4G model is new, just posted. And I highly doubt Steve Jobs is laughing. HP is damaging the tablet market value with these prices, and soaking up MILLIANS of users in a matter of a few days. I don't think anybody has done anything like this on this scale in business before. Sickdeals has over 3 million hits in 24 hours over this. People are biting.

In addition, HP is RESTOCKING TouchPads for online sales starting this Monday. Imagine how the little bit of PlayBook sales are going to hurt.

Turtle is right. You are not considering much more important issues in your poorly thought out theory.
The HP stock price lost 20% of its value because of this. Investors are livid. The firesale is underlining just how much of a loss the company is taking on just the Touchpad. No one tied to HP is going to win at this point by liquidating the remaining stock.

There were only somewhere in the area of 600K to 750K Touchpads made.
Not 2 MILLIANS.

The WebOS platform is now toxic. Its brand is even more diminished than it was a month ago and that has two immediate effects. The first is that the OS is going to be near to impossible to shop around for licensing. HTC and Samsung aren't going to invest in making handsets for an OS with a reputation for being a total failure. Second, WebOS developers are pissed. They were misled and then blindsided. No amount of Touchpads being sold now is going to make them want to code for an OS that has been deemed DOA. And with no real roadmap for its future you aren't going to see any more apps show up from the smaller software titles much less newer versions of the bigger ones like Skype, Kindle, or Facebook. And even the versions out now were beta at best. The only place HP has to fall back on with this is the value of WebOS' patents.

A lot of the TP sold this weekend is to resellers who want to flip them for profit. It may work but with no real updates to the flawed and buggy Touchpad you are going to see a lot of unhappy and unsatisfied owners even at that price. People are just caught up in the fact they are getting a tablet with a perceived value of $500. Clearly that value is wrong since it failed to sell even at $100 lower. I foresee a lot of buyers remorse if someone doesn't step up in the hacker community and port Android over for the touchpad.

[turtle777]

I think it's quite amusing how the WebOS fanbois try to turn one of the biggest consumer electronic failures of the last years into a strategic win. LOL.

-t

[Eug]

Yep, it is HP itself that has already written it off.

Originally Posted by Langdon 

I foresee a lot of buyers remorse if someone doesn't step up in the hacker community and port Android over for the touchpad.

Not just bring it over, but bring it over and not have the experience like a buggy hackintosh build.

[Kerrigan]

Honestly I think this is WebOS's swan song. Think about it:

[1] They have 200k of these units sitting on the shelves. A few days ago they said they were going to take a $100m hit buying them back.

[2] Buying them back is a waste.

[3] Giving them to customers at a heavy discount makes HP look respectable.

[4] HP still has contracts with manufacturers to make more of these things. Rather than cancel the contracts, which makes HP look bad, they decide to stick a 4G antenna in the Touch Pad and fulfill the contract, since they already were on the hook for a few hundred thousand orders.

Finally, HP will wash its hands of the TouchPad.

[imitchellg5]

Any large OEM like Samsung or HTC could easily put out a webOS phone.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Any large OEM like Samsung or HTC could easily put out a webOS phone.

At this point they'd be stupid to unless they got paid big bux to do so. However, it would seem that HP is no longer in any position to pay such a company to do that.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Eug 

At this point they'd be stupid to unless they got paid big bux to do so. However, it would seem that HP is no longer in any position to pay such a company to do that.

Actually, for Samsung it makes a lot of sense. Instead of continuing to develop Bada, they can pay a small fee to buy a stable and mature platform that has developers already attached.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Langdon 

The HP stock price lost 20% of its value because of this. Investors are livid.

LOL! The stock drop has almost nothing to do with the webOS announcement and everything to do with the fact that Apotheker completely broke investor confidence in the future of HP by announcing an intended withdraw from the PC business, which is MOST of HP's revenue.

[Langdon]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Actually, for Samsung it makes a lot of sense. Instead of continuing to develop Bada, they can pay a small fee to buy a stable and mature platform that has developers already attached.

No, it doesn't.
HP's poor implementation has soured everyone on WebOS. While there may be room for one more mobile OS this isn't it in its current incarnation. The only hope WebOS technologies have is for HP to set it free and make it open source so others can rebrand it somehow.

Microsoft has the will and money to push forward with their platform. RIM has its tiny little niche of corporate clients that may keep theirs alive but WebOS no longer even has the support of most of their software developers. There's no one left who wants to associate themselves with WebOS as long as its in the hands of HP. That goes double for anyone who came over from Palm.

I think it would be funny to read back in these threads to all those who championed WebOS back in the Spring and made so many outlandish claims about its inevitable success with the Veer and Touchpad. It didn't even last two months before HP threw in the towel so clearly your impressions of the mobile landscape were incorrect then so your futurecasting now isn't exactly standing on solid ground.

[imitchellg5]

As a registered webOS developer, you're completely off-base. There are a lot of developers who aren't willing to abandon the platform yet, who have decided to wait and see what will happen. If it's going to be licensed out, they'll be more than happy to continue work. The webOS situation with HP is ruined, but webOS itself isn't ruined. It's still a good OS and can still perform in the right hands.

[Langdon]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

the fact that Apotheker completely broke investor confidence in the future of HP by announcing an intended withdraw from the PC business, which is MOST of HP's revenue.

speaking of almost nothing : 15% is not MOST

The stock price dropped for various reasons including among them the move for HP to be more of a software company and the wasted 1 billion in capital HP put out for the acquisition of Palm only to turn around and quit before really making an attempt to see that investment through

Listen, I get why there are some staunch defenders for all this even after the platform collapsed. Quite a few people spent their money and championed this platform for years so to turn around and admit that all that was misguided is not easy. There was even an article about the psychology surrounding this phenomenon published a couple days ago.

Consumer Fanboys Confuse Brand Identity With Their Own | Wired Science | Wired.com

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

As a registered webOS developer, you're completely off-base. There are a lot of developers who aren't willing to abandon the platform yet, who have decided to wait and see what will happen. If it's going to be licensed out, they'll be more than happy to continue work. The webOS situation with HP is ruined, but webOS itself isn't ruined. It's still a good OS and can still perform in the right hands.

I hope you have another day job to fall back on
As i said before, the only real value is the patents at this point. Seeing the number of court cases and IP purchases made by MS, Apple, and Google in the last month the only reason anyone would buy WebOS is to add it to their portfolio to protect other mobile operating systems from litigation.

[Big Mac]

I can't think of a worse business model transition than the one HP announced last week. They've ruined their credibility across the board in my opinion.

WebOS is dead unless some company wants to buy it (not license it, buy it) and develop it without any HP taint on it. The stunt of a price cut to 1/5 the price certainly attracts deal hunters but does nothing to help a platform that has been left for dead by its owner. If HP had been serious about transitioning from hardware maker to OS licensor, it would have lined up licensees to announce and trumpet prior to making its announcement. That's not what happened.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

As a registered webOS developer, you're completely off-base.

As an outside observer, I think he's dead on. There will be some stragglers, but they'll slowly fade away.

The webOS situation with HP is ruined, but webOS itself isn't ruined. It's still a good OS and can still perform in the right hands.

webOS is ruined. HP ruined it. It's now the laughing stock of the consumer mobile market.

BTW, I find it amusing that there are still commercials on TV here for the HP TouchPad. I wonder how long they'll run for.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Langdon 

speaking of almost nothing : 15% is not MOST

We're both wrong; $40-45bn of $120bn, less than most but a lot more than 15%

Originally Posted by Langdon 

The stock price dropped for various reasons...

Yeah, that's kinda the point I was trying to make to you.

[Spheric Harlot]

Thought this was poignant:

HP proved that most people don't want to buy an incremental improvement to the iPhone that can't run iOS apps.

Then just for kicks, HP went and proved the same point again with the TouchPad.

Mobile Opportunity: The Part of Palm that Smartphone Companies Should be Bidding For

[Brien]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Actually, for Samsung it makes a lot of sense. Instead of continuing to develop Bada, they can pay a small fee to buy a stable and mature platform that has developers already attached.

I still say RIM should buy webOS.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Langdon 

Turtle is right. You are not considering much more important issues in your poorly thought out theory.
The HP stock price lost 20% of its value because of this. Investors are livid. The firesale is underlining just how much of a loss the company is taking on just the Touchpad. No one tied to HP is going to win at this point by liquidating the remaining stock.

There were only somewhere in the area of 600K to 750K Touchpads made.
Not 2 MILLIANS.

The WebOS platform is now toxic. Its brand is even more diminished than it was a month ago and that has two immediate effects. The first is that the OS is going to be near to impossible to shop around for licensing. HTC and Samsung aren't going to invest in making handsets for an OS with a reputation for being a total failure. Second, WebOS developers are pissed. They were misled and then blindsided. No amount of Touchpads being sold now is going to make them want to code for an OS that has been deemed DOA. And with no real roadmap for its future you aren't going to see any more apps show up from the smaller software titles much less newer versions of the bigger ones like Skype, Kindle, or Facebook. And even the versions out now were beta at best. The only place HP has to fall back on with this is the value of WebOS' patents.

A lot of the TP sold this weekend is to resellers who want to flip them for profit. It may work but with no real updates to the flawed and buggy Touchpad you are going to see a lot of unhappy and unsatisfied owners even at that price. People are just caught up in the fact they are getting a tablet with a perceived value of $500. Clearly that value is wrong since it failed to sell even at $100 lower. I foresee a lot of buyers remorse if someone doesn't step up in the hacker community and port Android over for the touchpad.

First. If you read what I posted you'd know this isn't my theory. I posted a link to a source where the rumor can be found. That thread on Pre Central haz some interesting thoughts. Read that thread, there's real evidence pointing to Samsung. But this is still speculation.

Second... the webOS is dead... nobody knows. However, HP has stated for months they want to license webOS. This has been very public. It's not new news.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by freudling 

First. If you read what I posted you'd know this isn't my theory. I posted a link to a source where the rumor can be found. That thread on Pre Central haz some interesting thoughts. Read that thread, there's real evidence pointing to Samsung. But this is still speculation.

It's pretty clear you buy into some of it, which seems exceedingly bizarre in light of the events in the past week.

Second... the webOS is dead... nobody knows.

HP knows it, and told the world in no uncertain terms this week that webOS is dead.

[turtle777]

There's a whole lot a denial going on in this thread.

-t

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Eug 

It's pretty clear you buy into some of it, which seems exceedingly bizarre in light of the events in the past week.


HP knows it, and told the world in no uncertain terms this week that webOS is dead.

No. You, like many others, are just perpetuating this. HP is getting out of the hardware business for webOS, but keeping the software business. Period.

[Big Mac]

freudling, before you were saying that WebOS would beat iOS. Now you're saying that WebOS still has a bright future when its biggest proponent has so clearly dropped the ball with it. Are you going to get tired of being so consistently wrong?

I'm curious also to know how HP put WebOS on the iPad to be able to know the iPad is such faster hardware. How is that even possible?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by freudling 

No. You, like many others, are just perpetuating this. HP is getting out of the hardware business for webOS, but keeping the software business. Period.

That's because nobody is buying or licensing it.

They're "keeping" the software business because nobody else wants it.

Like your parents "kept" the dead cat when they buried it at the foot of the tree down in the garden.

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

freudling, before you were saying that WebOS would beat iOS. Now you're saying that WebOS still has a bright future when its biggest proponent has so clearly dropped the ball with it. Are you going to get tired of being so consistently wrong?

I'm curious also to know how HP put WebOS on the iPad to be able to know the iPad is such faster hardware. How is that even possible?

You're taking what I said out of context. I never said webOS would take over iOS in global marketshare. Ever. What I said was that webOS blows iOS away. That is obviously my opinion and may not be shared by anyone else. Everyone can hate webOS but it doesn't change my opinion of it. In terms of markets I have always thought the leaders are and will continue to be iOS and Android, with WP7 gaining traction overseas.

And in fact, I have written some damning pieces on HP and webOS, and called out Jon Rubinstein right after the Think Beyond event lambasting him for the announced hardware. I also wrote a very critical Email to HP's Board of Directors as well.

In short, I never had confidence in webOS at all with the people, company and products it had been resting on.

For me the TouchPad is awesome but the phones suck bad. Fom a business perspective more is needed to draw people into webOS.

I have no idea if webOS will ne healthy or dead moving forward. I hope it lives on and there are indicators that it will. But nobody knows.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

freudling, before you were saying that WebOS would beat iOS. Now you're saying that WebOS still has a bright future when its biggest proponent has so clearly dropped the ball with it. Are you going to get tired of being so consistently wrong?

I'm curious also to know how HP put WebOS on the iPad to be able to know the iPad is such faster hardware. How is that even possible?

Given access to a hardware engineering team, I imagine they can run it on any system they want within reason.
I also read they were able to run it within a browser somehow.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Given access to a hardware engineering team, I imagine they can run it on any system they want within reason.
I also read they were able to run it within a browser somehow.

That was the same, unverified source. That source also claimed it ran "several times faster" than on native hardware.

I'm not sure I believe that.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

They're "keeping" the software business because nobody else wants it.

Like your parents "kept" the dead cat when they buried it at the foot of the tree down in the garden.

-t

[freudling]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

That's because nobody is buying or licensing it.

They're "keeping" the software business because nobody else wants it.

Like your parents "kept" the dead cat when they buried it at the foot of the tree down in the garden.

We've never owned a cat.

[turtle777]

oh, sure, that explains why you didn't get the analogy.

-t

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Brien 

I still say RIM should buy webOS.

They would if they were smart, but they are less intelligent than HP at this point.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I'm curious also to know how HP put WebOS on the iPad to be able to know the iPad is such faster hardware. How is that even possible?

It makes no sense to me. HP must be insanely good at hacking custom CPUs/GPUs and then have gone through the trouble of optimizing the software to match the hardware. And the standard TouchPad certainly isn't slow by any means (especially after 3.0.2), and webOS 3.x is optimized for the TouchPad hardware (Qualcomm was involved from the start to help out with this). It makes no sense how webOS would run quickly at all on a piece of hardware using a completely different architecture.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

They would if they were smart, but they are less intelligent than HP at this point.

The classic Loser + Loser = Winner

Has worked so many times

-t

[imitchellg5]

At this point, BB OS has just as muddled a future as webOS.

[Langdon]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

the standard TouchPad certainly isn't slow by any means (especially after 3.0.2), and webOS 3.x is optimized for the TouchPad hardware (Qualcomm was involved from the start to help out with this).

WebOS never got around to being fully optimized for the TP GPU as far as I know.
It was promised to be delivered but I don't think they got around to releasing an update before they killed the platform

[Eug]

Bring back Carly Fiorina. She'll fix it!

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

At this point, BB OS has just as muddled a future as webOS.

I'd still say webOS has a brighter future than BB. BB is a total dead-end, whereas webOS is just mired corporate drama.

[ort888]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

The classic Loser + Loser = Winner

Has worked so many times

-t

Two turkeys don't make an eagle as they say...

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

I'd still say webOS has a brighter future than BB. BB is a total dead-end, whereas webOS is just mired corporate drama.

True. In terms of outlook, it is pretty dire for both, but webOS at least has a very modern foundation. It won't take a total rethink to make webOS an Android or iOS competitor.

[Eug]

Well, I'm not too optimistic about Blackberry either at this point, but at least it has a business model, a customer base, and a large company support it. webOS? None of the above.

[imitchellg5]

Agreed, but RIM's business model and customer base are quickly dropping away in place of better alternatives. And running Android apps via QNX isn't the answer.

[Shaddim]

Well, on IRC they just said they already have CM7 on the TP. "Give us a few days and it will be solid". Sooooo... that doesn't appear to be bad at all.

[freudling]

There's up to a 2 ghz kernel that can be installed now. Many users report that with the 1.5 ghz kernel along with the 4 speed up patches the TouchPad is screaming. Zdnet says it's as fast as any tablet out there.

Nary any extra voltage at this higher clock speed. And no noticeable increases in heat.

I'm doing these installs tomorrow. This should make the value equation of the TouchPad that much better.

[Stogieman]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I'm curious also to know how HP put WebOS on the iPad to be able to know the iPad is such faster hardware. How is that even possible?

Originally Posted by iMitchellg5

It makes no sense how webOS would run quickly at all on a piece of hardware using a completely different architecture.

The iPad is "magical." It is not suppose to make sense.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Stogieman 

The iPad is "magical." It is not suppose to make sense.

http://forums.macnn.com/103/ipod-iph...r-competitors/

[turtle777]

So, the Touchpad will become the nerd platform for folks that like to fiddle with OS installs.
Awesome.

The rest of the world will just use what works out of the box.

-t

[Eug]

Indeed.

As I've suggested before, hackintoshability isn't the path to commercial success.