It hasn't even been ten years since HP swallowed Compaq whole. Today, the company announced that it might just be willing to sell off its PC division, which is essentially what remains of Compaq. That's essentially $25 billion down the drain. Did HP make money on the Compaq merger? It's tough to say. It probably did under the watch of Mark Hurd, but we all know
how that ended.
Of course, the actual divestment of HP's PC group isn't the immediate or most shocking news HP dropped today. Solidifying its reputation as a firm where technology goes to die, HP has finally decided to kill webOS entirely. That means it tablets, which have been an undeniable failure, are soon to be on the discount shelves at Best Buy and sold on the pages of Woot for a steep discount.
How did it come to this? Wasn't this the year of the tablet? Isn't HP at least going to stick with its tablet OS for a year? As it stands, its been three months since the HP webOS tablets shipped, and thus far, it sounds like they've sold through well under a million. That's not good for a company that doesn't build anything unless there will be a million sold.
Perhaps the oddest part of all this is thh fact that RIM is the biggest loser in the whole equation. Environment, support and uptake aside, webOS is a terrific platform to develop on. It was build from the ground up for developers, not for consumers, necessarily. That's not to say webOS wasn't easy to use, just that the original creators of the platform knew that they had to win developers first, if they wanted to have any users at all.
So when HP swooped in an grabbed up Palm, it was RIM that was left out in the cold. That company still needs a decent OS, one that could unite its office endeavours with its consumer hopes. webOS would have been the perfect acquisition for RIM, though the level of ineptitude at RIM, currently, makes me think it would have screwed things up just as much as HP. RIM, however, would have given webOS devices a lot more than 2 months to succeed.
For your edification, the exact words out of HP: "In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize (sic) the value of webOS software going forward."
So what does that mean they'll really be doing with webOS? My guess is that HP will be selling off the entire Palm portfolio for the patents. Google may want those, and naturally, Apple, Oracle and Microsoft will also. Who knows, HP might be able to make some of its billions back by selling off its failed mobile device group.