HP Spinning Off WebOS and Exiting Hardware Business

A number of readers submitted rumors about some announcements HP was set to make today. Now, the announcements have actually happened, and the news looks grim. For starters, they are exiting the tablet and phone market and repositioning webOS for use in appliances and vehicles. While confirming they are in talks to acquire Autonomy, they also announced they are considering exiting the PC hardware business entirely in order to focus on their software business.

Comments

Audio webcast link

[symbolset]

www.hp.com/investor/2011q3webcast

Re:Audio webcast link

[jhoegl]

Why in the hell would they want to exit the hardware business?
Their PCs, laptops, and servers are the "mid-range" that I always get because Dell is cheap, but I can show how shitty they are and IBM/Lenovo is the best but too expensive to justify the cost.
Of course I always reinstall the OS because of all the crap they throw on it. But really you have to do that for all of them.

Re:Audio webcast link

[Just Brew It!]

Profit margins in the PC hardware business are razor-thin, and not likely to improve. So while their PC business does generate a large percentage of their revenue, it is a much smaller percentage of their profits.

Re:Audio webcast link

[BeShaMo]

Their laptops suck. We for some reason have them at my company and they keep breaking. They make nice servers though a bit overpriced.

Re:Audio webcast link

[Anonymous Coward]

Because PCs have reached the ideal state that certain ./'ers are always pushing - they are a commodity. As a commodity, the margins are razor-thin, and the boundary between a successful product and a financial disaster is almost indistinguishable. There are greener pastures for HP (they hope), so they are heading there. Exactly the same reason the IBM exited the PC business 5 or 6 years ago.

Re:Audio webcast link

[symbolset]

This is live now.

Re:Audio webcast link

[freedumb2000]

Their http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html is really great product. It's small, need almost no cooling, uses little power just like any random Atom system, but support ECC memory, has a really nice case, ip kvm and full server support by HP and is cheap! I would really miss this system.

Re:Audio webcast link

[denobug]

Yes there's not a lot of profits. But so does the Energy wholesale. Welcome to the wholesale marketing world!

Seriously though in this economy cash is king. Most big-named energy company knows this. With revolving debt or not they keep a handsome amount of cash on-hand from the revenue generated from stable but relatively thin margin business units.

So yeah. Perhaps they just have not learn the shift in paradigm properly and blame the shift as "bad", in reality they just don't know their stuff that's all.

Re:Audio webcast link

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is under the servers business so...

Re:Audio webcast link

[hairyfeet]

And are their margins REALLY that thin? Sure they ain't making Apple money but HP has never been a low rent brand like eMachines or Dell for that matter. Hp has always had themselves a really nice niche carved out right in the dead center of the curve and for customers that don't feel comfortable with custom builts (which admittedly i'm finding less and less resistance to when they find out how much money they can save while getting quality hardware) I have no problem playing VAR to HP gear. Unlike Dell typical HP hardware is usually well designed and built, Compaq crap not withstanding of course.

I have to wonder if Carly and that other one after her didn't leave the company in a lot worse shape than they are letting on. it wouldn't be the first time we have seen a CEO bring a company from a decent niche to the edge of death, just look at what the Pepsi guy did to Apple back in the day. if they are desperate enough they are seriously thinking of bailing on their PC business I have to wonder what is really going on there.

Re:Audio webcast link

[afabbro]

Yes there's not a lot of profits. But so does the Energy wholesale. Welcome to the wholesale marketing world! Seriously though in this economy cash is king. Most big-named energy company knows this. With revolving debt or not they keep a handsome amount of cash on-hand from the revenue generated from stable but relatively thin margin business units.

It's not clear to me what you're smoking, but there is no relationship between the wholesale energy market and PCs. None. I guess it's the only two industries your TA discussed in your Freshman Economics 101 class?

Cash may be king, but you do not "keep a handsome amount" on hand by operating thin-margin businesses. That's kind of the whole point - thin-margin businesses don't throw off much cash.

So yeah. Perhaps they just have not learn the shift in paradigm properly and blame the shift as "bad", in reality they just don't know their stuff that's all.

So yeah. Someone doesn't know his stuff here.

Re:Audio webcast link

[unencode200x]

low rent brand like eMachines or Dell for that matter

Hey, how's it going hairyfeet?

Just want to give my opinion on this as someone who has been involved in the purchasing AND actually supporting over 3,000 Dell, HP, and other PCs. I would not put Dell in the same category as eMachines. eMachines are (were?) cheap junk.

Dell has several lines of computers that are appropriate and prices for different use cases. Their low-end stuff comes with low-end support and engineering, they make no qualms about it. If you have a business use, need reliability, good support, and sound engineering then buy Optiplex or dimension. Their well-priced and work great. Same thing with their laptops. In my experience, anyway, HP has similar lines.

Re:Audio webcast link

[Anonymous Coward]

At the school where I teach we've had to send back HP computers every 4 months of so from parts failing. It's common to have at least half the lab down at any given time because of this. I'd imagine they are getting raped repairing the shitty machines they sell. Maybe the original sale had a margin, but when you have to service constantly and it's under warranty, I think that's where they are taking it in the pooper.

We are switching to Dell, even the servers are switching because the school is learning to hate HP.

Re:Audio webcast link

[dakameleon]

With a URL like that, it's no surprise they couldn't make a 21st century technology sell.

Re:Audio webcast link

[hairyfeet]

Going fine thanks. I haven't touched Dell since that run of Optiplex where the caps go BOOM! real good. Can't remember the line but that was irritating as hell. The problem I have with Dell is they have so damned many lines it is damned hard to get it through a customer's thick head that an Inspiron and an Optiplex are NOT the same damned thing!

You see that's the problem with not having a specific low rent brand like HP with Compaq, in that people by and large don't know jack about PCs so if I were to recommend a dell Optiplex the next thing i know they have an inspiron and are pissed because the POS fell apart.

meh I'm just about out of the VAR gig anyway, too much PITA. If they don't buy it from me I won't support it, simple as that. that way I have complete control of the hardware and can design for the working condition. you'd be surprised how many dumbasses will buy an inspiron and then put the thing in a dusty factory somewhere. naturally they make it maybe a week past warranty and then BOOM! real good. just not worth the BS.

Re:Audio webcast link

[squiggleslash]

Have you bought a Lenovo lately? Their quality has plummeted in the last three or four years.

I'm more of a fan of Dell these days. They make solid, standard, hardware. HP - the one machine I tried was on the cheap end of the scale but I don't have any complaints. But HP is HP, it's made up of four of the most innovative computer companies in America - the original HP, DEC, Compaq, and Palm - yet it behaves as if it's Gateway. This is a sad end to a great story in the computer industry. Maybe if Carly hadn't fucked things up...

Re:Audio webcast link

[EXrider]

I haven't touched Dell since that run of Optiplex where the caps go BOOM! real good. Can't remember the line but that was irritating as hell.

The infamous cap plauge was not restricted to Dell Optiplex's, I have personally experienced large amounts of failed HPaq DX2000's, IBM Netvistas, and even a few Apple iMacs and eMacs that suffered the fate as well. I will say that Dell and IBM's support was amongst the worst at handling the issue. HP and Apple were great, Apple even paid CDW to replace the logic board in an eMac that was way out of warranty.

Re:Audio webcast link

[Coren22]

If you hate HP desktops/laptops, and the guy above hates Dell desktops/laptops, perhaps you are both looking at the wrong line of computers from these companies. Both HP and Dell make really good systems for business, but you have to look at the business lines, not the shitty consumer lines. Dell: Latitude, Optiplex, Precision HP: Envy (consumer, but still quite good), Elitebook, Probook, Compaq (I know, they were shitty before HP bought them, but they seem to be the name used for the better line now)

The servers on both sides are very good, around here we have mostly Dell, but that is because it is simply better to be uniform on the server side, HP is quite good as well. If HP stops making hardware, there will be no one in the same range as Dell, and Dell will be forced to compete with Sony on the consumer side, and Panasonic and IBM on the business side. Maybe this will make Dell better in the long run, but I think it will increase prices on the short term :(

Re:Audio webcast link

[pnutjam]

Dusty factories should go thin client, I like Igel.

Re:Audio webcast link

[datapharmer]

Yep, I've seen more HPs fail from this than Dells personally, but Dell support for known hardware issues sucks - same deal with the bad nvidia chips. I had to threaten to remove Dell from my list of approved suppliers to get them to exchange a bad laptop motherboard that they had already admitted was bad. Eventually I got to talk to someone high enough up the chain to get the issue resolved, but it never should have gone that far. That said, I can't tell you how many times HP equipment has failed less than a month out of warranty (particularly consumer hardware).

They've been practicing

[Stenchwarrior]

Judging by the amount of bloat-ware that's been coming with HP computers for the past several years, it would seem they've been practicing for this very moment.

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the amount of bloat-ware that's been coming with HP computers for the past several years, it would seem they've been practicing for this very moment.

My hp laptop overheated and they will not do anything to help. they have had other models do this as well but they had to pay something to them due to lawsuits. I spent way too much money a few years ago to have the computer overheat and stop working. So I was not going to buy anything else HP ever again as the service was not good at all.
Marion

Re:They've been practicing

[MightyMartian]

Yup, they fucked me over with the nVidia meltdown issue they refuse to do anything about. An $800 notebook down the fucking tubes and just two years old.

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think they acquired EDS? It wasn't for the sparkling personalities working within

Re:They've been practicing

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Judging by the amount of bloat-ware that's been coming with HP computers for the past several years, it would seem they've been practicing for this very moment.

My hp laptop overheated and they will not do anything to help. they have had other models do this as well but they had to pay something to them due to lawsuits. I spent way too much money a few years ago to have the computer overheat and stop working. So I was not going to buy anything else HP ever again as the service was not good at all. Marion

Was that due to a defective junk series nVidia chipset? Geforce Go 6150? 7200?

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, apparently their previous software delivered WAY too much functionality for its price... they're bringing Autonomy on to help them fix that.

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the bloatware comes from their software business, which is now their core business.

Re:They've been practicing

[shoehornjob]

Judging by the amount of bloat-ware that's been coming with HP computers for the past several years, it would seem they've been practicing for this very moment.

OMFG BLOATWARE My wife bought an HP laptop a while back and I couldn't believe the amount of bloat on that thing. I wanted to remove it for her but she just doesn't understand. HP selling their computer business = no great loss. Her newest laptop is an Asus and it's almost bloat free.

Re:They've been practicing

[RicktheBrick]

I thought that memresistors were suppose to be one of the greatest invention in computers. HP was suppose to have invented it and it was suppose to go into production around 2012. I thought they were suppose to be a non-volatile ram memory so that it would mean near instant booting of the computer. It will not be the first or last time someone has introduced a product that never made it to the market.

Re:They've been practicing

[houstonbofh]

Does not matter. HP sold it as there's and solved the issues with a hearty "Fuck You." They did the same thing a few years back with a white list for the mini-pci slot. Love the printers. Would not take the computers as a gift.

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

unless you build a computer from scratch, they ALL come with bloat..

Re:They've been practicing

[hairyfeet]

I would suggest you look at the MSI AMD laptops and netbooks. That is what i've been getting my customers that need to be mobile and they are great! they have dual, triple, and quad CPUs, Radeon GPUs, plenty of RAM, don't get crazy hot like the Nvidia stuff, just good solid all around machines.

As for TFA just another great example of what happens when management runs a company into the shitter. between Carly and Hurd frankly it is a miracle that they are afloat and the fact they are already pulling the plug on the tablet without even letting it build any steam just shows what a clueless bunch they have at the helm of that company.

Look how long it took for Android to take off, it didn't just pop out and become a mega hit in less than 2 months. it took several releases to get the bugs worked out and the UI nice and solid, yet HP thinks they can release a $500 tablet, the same price as an iPad, and then just walk off with the market? what are they smoking?

Sad to see them go, but it'll be just another corp killed by stupidity. Oh well at least there is still MSI, ASUS, and Lenovo.

Re:They've been practicing

[MightyMartian]

Right now I'm using a big ol' heavy Dell Inspiron 9300. I bumped it up to 2gb of RAM and threw a copy of Vista Business I had hanging around. Bit slow, but good enough for Chrome and playing DVDs. When i get the cash it sure isn't going to be an HP/Compaq, that's for damned sure.

Re:They've been practicing

[Nikker]

Nothing beats an old Laserjet IMHO.

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

I ***hate*** working with those guys. One of them, who didn't know his ass from a whole in the world, when talking to one of our most senior engineers who has a history of rocking out projects with not a single problem (Iiterally we all sit around with nothing to do on go-live day) starting talking about "pissing matches." WTF??

Re:They've been practicing

[klui]

Dell and Apple got hit with the nVIDIA debacle, too. The problem with the nVIDIA settlement was more HP models were affected. I would be pissed to find my notebook has the same chip, symptoms, but I cannot make a claim.

Re:They've been practicing

[hairyfeet]

Well when you're ready look at the MSI models. Damned nice little machines and having the video offloaded to the Radeon really helps on the battery life. I don't blame ya using Vista Business if you had it laying around but damn I hate that OS! Windows 7 rocks but Vista is like the retarded cousin Cleetus with the clubfoot. I've tested Vista and 7 side by side and the responsiveness of 7 just stomps Vista.

So I'd be looking at the MSI models when you are ready for a new laptop. Some folks swear by the new Brazos based but frankly I prefer the Athlon and Turion based myself. Brazos is just a little slow for my tastes whereas most of the Athlon and Turion are 2.0-2.4Ghz which I've found to be just about the perfect speed for a mobile workstation.

Re:They've been practicing

[UnknowingFool]

Yes but from what I remember Apple will fix laptops that have the nVidia problem up to 4 years after purchase date (to 2012). I think there was a class action suit that was settled with nVidia. Unfortunately the period to make a claim is over.

Re:They've been practicing

[k4b]

HP's purchase of Palm and Palm's WebOS sounded the death knell for WebOS. A truly excellent smart phone OS which HP has decided not to continue to market on smart phones.

Re:They've been practicing

[cthulhu11]

We were forced to buy a DL580G7 recently. It came with no bloatware.

Re:They've been practicing

[Coren22]

Perhaps spend a little more and buy a business level computer instead? The bloatware is for the average Joe, not for people who actually know how to use computers.

Re:They've been practicing

[MightyMartian]

The Inspiron I'm using has an Intel chipset, so that's not a worry.

Re:They've been practicing

[MightyMartian]

Will do. Thanks for the heads up! Be in the market this fall.

Re:They've been practicing

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of God: Suppose vs. Supposed.

Re:They've been practicing

[wwphx]

A friend of mine lost 3 laptops due to that which HP did nothing for. My MacBook Pro suffered that meltdown and the Apple Store had it repaired in two days and said they would have replaced it even out of warranty.

Re:They've been practicing

[alexandre_ganso]

Even the MacBooks?

Re:They've been practicing

[EXrider]

I thought that memresistors were suppose to be one of the greatest invention in computers. HP was suppose to have invented it and it was suppose to go into production around 2012. I thought they were suppose to be a non-volatile ram memory so that it would mean near instant booting of the computer.

This is pretty much what we have with SSDs now.

Figures

[Udo Schmitz]

"According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory."

http://allthingsd.com/20110816/ouchpad-best-buy-sitting-on-a-pile-of-unsold-hp-tablets/

Re:Figures

[JDG1980]

Good. Maybe the remainder will be blown out at clearance prices; the hardware is still good, and I'm sure someone will figure out a way to load Android on these things.

Re:Figures

[UnknowingFool]

The TouchPad has only been on sale for over a month. It doesn't really have many apps. Did they really expect it to sell out? I really like to know what their expectations were. It seems pulling the plug after such a short time suggests they didn't think it was going take a while to make traction against Apple's iPad.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they expected to sell out, but 25k is a pathetically small number for a tablet at launch. Every other tablet released by a major manufacturer has sold more than that in its first day. Trying to push yet another OS into the tablet space was a terrible idea.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick, somebody start hacking these things so we have a good source of cheap LCD displays for hobby projects in the future.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully woot will blow some out for $100!

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't talking about iOS. He was talking about Android.

Re:Figures

[phonewebcam]

Wow. Their tablet bombed a month from launch and that's the straw which broke the camels back, causing the top brass to pull the whole company out of hardware totally. Just, like, Wow. I was at the Gadget show in the UK earlier this year and an HP rep gave me a prelaunch demo - I was genuinely impressed, both by the kit and his enthusiasm. This is a brutal business indeed.

Re:Figures

[Machtyn]

True, but this is after a $50 price drop and then a $100 price drop. With Android devices selling at ~$300 with better hardware features (better cases, GPS), I'm not surprised that these aren't selling even at $400. Woot.com put these on sale and moved only ~650 of them.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't talking about Android. He was talking about Linux.

Re:Figures

[HarrySquatter]

Well except the Xoom which was as big of a flop. Took it nearly 6 weeks just to sell 100k units.

Re:Figures

[Sinning]

I prefer that someone hacks an android rom to run on it.

Re:Figures

[cayenne8]

True, but this is after a $50 price drop and then a $100 price drop. With Android devices selling at ~$300 with better hardware features (better cases, GPS), I'm not surprised that these aren't selling even at $400. Woot.com put these on sale and moved only ~650 of them.

Or just get a $250 Barnes and Noble "nook color" ereader, put Android Cyanogen mod7 on it...and you get a nice tablet for cheap.

I got my brand new for like $135 with some credits I had. The only thing it doesn't have is a camera, and so far, I've not missed that.

Certainly not worth an extra $415+ for it....

:)

Re:Figures

[RoverDaddy]

What Android tablet of the size of a TouchPad costs $300? With a capacitive screen? Dual core CPU? Not being sarcastic, please point me to one and I'll check it's specs. Every $300 tablet I've heard of has been a disappointment.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

My Android runs Linux. I'm sure yours do too.

Re:Figures

[PRMan]

Asus Transformer $399, capacitive screen, dual core. Granted, it's $100 more, but it's incredible for the price.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

BestBuy.ca is "temporarily out of stock" for both the 16GB and 32GB, so the inventory must be all in the US. Makes sense, because in a sell-off ($299? $249? who knows how low it's going to go) the Canadians always miss out.

Re:Figures

[symbolset]

The Transformer is nice and well worth the $400. But you were specific at under $300, capacitive screen and dual core CPU so that would be the Viewsonic gTablet: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EPV7TK at $270. I have one of each and they are very nice. I was going to load cyanogen on the gTablet but my wife likes it as it is with Android 2.2. Maybe upgrade it later.

Re:Figures

[Kenshin]

My Android runs HURD.

Re:Figures

[cptmoose]

I just bought an Iconia Tab A500 on Sunday from Target for $400, which came with a $100 Target gift card. This may still be available, and it meets your specs. The Iconia was apparently also on sale at Staples a couple of weeks ago for $300, but I missed it. So it's not too hard to get a decent ~$300 Android tablet if you look around.

Re:Figures

[HouseOfMisterE]

Yeah, I bought an A500 for $300 from Staples last month. It is a very nice tablet. The model with 16GB of built-in storage is currently on sale at both Target and BestBuy for $400 with a $100 gift card, and Costco has the model with 32GB of built-in storage for $450 with a $100 gift card. I've read that the Costco unit includes a case, but I can't verify this.

Re:Figures

[couchslug]

"It doesn't really have many apps"

Which could have been rectified before launch....

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but every BB I've been at has only stocked the more expensive 32GB version, and not had any of the more reasonably priced 16GB version.

Plus the 'soft launch', and the even less spectacular 'real launch'. That still happened a week before the software update rolled out that made the thing faster/more-stable. Why they didn't just hold off the launch a month until the software was actually working, I have no idea.

It's like they tried to fail.

Re:Figures

[RoverDaddy]

Thanks for the info! I'll have to follow up on what comes along with the A500 as well as the Viewsonic gTablet mentioned above. One thing I see mentioned in the reviews for the A500 is that it doesn't support Netflix yet, and the gTablet seems to require a mod. I'd really like to see the tablets reaching the point of running Netflix out of the box, as it would probably be one of my major uses of the device.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

You DO NOT bring such a product to market then. Certainly not at HP. It's clear it wasn't ready for primetime.

Re:Figures

[noahisaac]

Why on earth would you want Android on a webOS device? The hardware is ancient. It's the OS that's good.

Re:Figures

[JDG1980]

If the price dropped to $99 on clearance, it would be better hardware than any other tablet at that price point.

Re:Figures

[Coren22]

Seconded. I love the Nook with Cyanogen. The only thing I don't like is that Cyanogen seems to decrease the battery life to two days, but not a big deal except when I am camping.

Re:Figures

[Coren22]

Perhaps you should reduce your expectations? Dual core is rather new in tablets, so it is still quite expensive. The Nook Color is $250 but does not have dual core. Nowhere in the GP was dual core mentioned, just better features and he even mentioned two features he liked more.

Re:Figures

[Coren22]

Heck, it would be a great tertiary screen for my desktop. Why hasn't someone come up with software that can turn an Android into another screen (not RDP or VNC where it would be the screen)?

Re:Figures

[Coren22]

It seems available in the US, but still 399.99 for the 16gb

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+TouchPad+Tablet+with+16GB+Memory+-+Black/2842056.p?id=1218358284065&skuId=2842056&st=Hp%20tablet&cp=1&lp=2

So no sell off yet, but I can always deal with waiting until they are in the bargain bin.

Dumping WebOS makes me wonder....

[Anonymous Coward]

....what RIM stock is selling for today?

Re:Dumping WebOS makes me wonder....

[WrongSizeGlass]

....what RIM stock is selling for today?

* Closed at $25.76
* 52 wk low $21.60
* 52 wk high $70.54
* Market cap: $13.42B

Apple or Google could easily buy RIM with cash on hand.

Re:Dumping WebOS makes me wonder....

[wavedeform]

Yeah, but why?

Re:Dumping WebOS makes me wonder....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but why?

Some of the same reasons that Google bought Motorola Mobility: patents, existing customers, eliminate competition. RIM's corporate customers are cash cows.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok I RTFA, and I see nowhere in it that they are "considering exiting the PC hardware business." Very misinformative. They are exiting the tablet hardware market, but they're still king in the PC market.

Re:What?

[symbolset]

HP also reported that it plans to announce that its board of directors has authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG). HP will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110818006301/en/HP-Confirms-Discussions-Autonomy-Corporation-plc-Business

Re:What?

[redemtionboy]

I thought this as well. Why on earth would you stop doing something that, according to TFA, counts as 1/3 of your revenue.

Re:What?

[Udo Schmitz]

I see nowhere in it that they are "considering exiting the PC hardware business."

HP says:

"HP also reported that it plans to announce that its board of directors has authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG). HP will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction."

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110818006301/en/HP-Confirms-Discussions-Autonomy-Corporation-plc-Business

Re:What?

[alen]

apple makes most of the money in the PC market. HP and dell mostly sell the cheap no profit machines.

the original plan was to sell a variety of models with the low end models being loss leaders for the more expensive ones. but Apple stole the more expensive market and left the loss leader market to dell/hp.

Re:What?

[prgrmr]

for the same reason Carly fired almost all of R&D, sold the itanium engineers to Intel, and considered getting out the printer market, despite those sales being the majority of their revenue: greed, short-sightedness, selfishness, and the desire to be seen in the news.

Re:What?

[sconeu]

apple makes most of the money in the PC market. HP and dell mostly sell the cheap no profit machines.

Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not an exit though.

Re:What?

[Grishnakh]

Revenues != Profits. If the profits are terrible (i.e. they're just breaking even), then it might make sense to give up on that, or sell it to someone else who thinks they can do a better job with it, or is happy with low profits.

It's too bad, however, because even if a division isn't profitable, as long as it's breaking even (or slightly better), that's keeping a lot of people employed, and obviously it's keeping some customers happy too. But big companies want profit ueber alles, so just having good revenues and stability isn't enough for them, so they throw this away in search of something that has giant profits, which they may or may not find.

Re:What?

[DJRumpy]

Interesting theory, except Apple is the market leader when you take into account all of it's PC and tablet sales and Apple has a health profit margin for hardware. I tend to think their profit margins are a bit more sane than 2%. Thin margins are great for consumers up front, assuming you don't get bargain basement parts throughout, but not good for long term business. Given that HP rank the poorest in hardware failures in the above linked PDF, HP is a good example of cutting your margins too thin. Being #1 is great, but unless it's profitable and has market recognition for ROI, it's an empty and valueless statistic.

Re:What?

[sglewis100]

apple makes most of the money in the PC market. HP and dell mostly sell the cheap no profit machines.

Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?

In that scenario, or is it better to look at ACTUAL market share? 10.6% is pretty respectable. HP had 24.35% of the market, or say about two and a half times the sales in a quarter. Since Apple's margin is WAY higher (near 50%) and their average selling price is WAY higher, I would imagine the correct question is would you rather have $500 each from 2 million people or $25 each from 5 million people.

Re:What?

[HarrySquatter]

Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?

The former, clearly. Why would you want to have to make 3 orders of magnitude more sales to get only 1 order of magnitude more profit?

Re:What?

[redemtionboy]

that's keeping a lot of people employed

I obviously wasn't intending to talk about anything like this, but hey, you brought it up. :P So this statement you made is one that I see a lot of people making and I think it shows a disconnect between the understanding of what a profit actually means and what jobs are. You probably don't want to hear about it, but it bothers me, so deal. A profit is far more than just making moneyIt shows that you are creating wealth. One of the fundamental law of economics is that trade creates wealth. By trading, you should end up with more than you gave up. When you can't make a profit, it shows that resources are being improperly allocated. If HP decides they suck at PCs and close down, that doesn't mean those jobs and resources are lost. It means they have to be reallocated. If HP sold 1,000,000 PCs a year, that doesn't mean there are 1,000,000 PCs less going to be purchased. A business staying around that doesn't make a profit is preventing those resources from being used by a company that can make better use of them and create more wealth. This creation of wealth is one of the biggest assets to the advancement of humanity and to encourage the opposite prevents progress from happening. The problem that a lot of people have, of course, is that the wealth ends up in the hands of the top and the elite, but this frustration should not be used to advocate the prevention of wealth creation. This is the result of very different causes.

Re:What?

[Guy Harris]

That's not an exit though.

To what does "that" refer? "a ... partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction" might not be considered an exit, but would you truly not consider "a full ... separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction" not to be an exit?

Re:What?

[houstonbofh]

Depends on how much is tied up to make it. If you profit margin is 2% and a certificate of deposit is 4%, than it makes sense to put that capital elsewhere. No where does it say how much capital is tied up making that 2%, however.

Re:What?

[vakuona]

Definitely $100 each from 1,000 people. It's less profit overall, but more hassle and more like a better return on investment. Better yet, $100 each from 10,000 people. You forget Apple is not miniscule compared to HP and Dell in PC revenues. It's probably about a third or more of the revenue that Dell and HP get and much greater profits. So yeah, HP would love to be Apple right now.

Re:What?

[vakuona]

That was meant to read "more likely a better return on investment".

Re:What?

[afidel]

HP has already stolen market share from DELL because they have become so good at making PC's, the fact that they make little/no profit just means they are in a very competitive market. If HP stops making PC's then there will be fewer players in the market and so prices will rise and profits along with it, but that doesn't mean that anyone suddenly got better at making PC's only that the market is distorted by being closer to a monopoly. Remember that for classic economics to work you have to have a commodity product with many suppliers and zero barriers to entry.

Re:What?

[Compuser]

OK, I will bite. If a big company goes under, it surely does not mean that the market contracts. So far we agree. But it does mean that redundancy is reduced. Why is that bad? Well, first of all it means the system is not robust to events like Fukushima. Less players means more concentrated business chain means more vulnerability to disruption. Second, elimination of redundancy means less competition. Which implies higher prices, less quality, and less service. So what we get is not necessarily that resources were mis-allocated. It could just be that temporary sentiment shift places less value on robust supply and overall competition. Markets have often been quite short-sited and this could be a manifestation of that. Finally, one less big company means one less lobbyist. The surviving players can now make sure their voice is not balanced out by another player pulling in their own direction.

Also, I am not sure I buy that trade creates wealth. If I have two people on an otherwise empty island and they are starving to death for lack of food, whether or not they trade their shirts makes no difference to their wealth and might even detract from it if you factor in the calories they expend in trading. Wealth comes from two places and two places only: new natural resource discoveries and improvements in efficiency (i.e. scientific, technological and business process discoveries). Trade can stimulate these two and that is the only way it can help create wealth. Trade can also be detrimental. The most detrimental is trade that leads to bubbles, that is when strong correlation patterns show in the trade.

Re:What?

[sl149q]

This is just what IBM did with Lenovo, spin off the PC business to a (most likely) Asian partner. The partner has the headaches but gets to use the HP branding for as long as it makes sense.

Re:What?

[mikael]

Because CEO's are paid bonuses according to how much they expect the company to grow. Shareholders expect the predicted growth to be at least linear if not exponential.

It makes sense to blow off an entire perfectly division in the style of a dark sci-fi movie, because of the belief that those staff could be redeployed somewhere more profitable elsewhere (not factoring in that some staff may make a complete career change, leave the industry, go back to university or take early retirement as a way of saying F.U.) Shareholders would cheer when layoffs were made, because it meant lower overheads for social security payments for at least one quarter.

Some companies expect each division to make at least 10% growth, otherwise staff in the entire division would be redeployed elsewhere. There was a belief that divisions grew like living beings (child - growing rapidly, still findings its way around, teenager - still growing, knows how and where to go, finding its way, adult - slower growth, but self-sufficient, aristocrat - stopped growing, but has influence over other groups). The latter stage was reached after successive hiring freezes and layoffs.

Re:What?

[Tacvek]

A company spin off is a very, very different thing from simply closing down the PC factories and shredding the plans.

"Exiting the PC hardware business" sounds more like the latter, while if the former was meant, the normal phrasing would be "spinning off the PC Hardware business".

Technically "exiting the PC hardware business" could refer to spinning off a business, but that is not what jumps immediately to mind.

Re:What?

[CohibaVancouver]

Being #1 is great, but unless it's profitable and has market recognition for ROI, it's an empty and valueless statistic.

1. Collect Underpants
2. ???
3. Profit!

Re:What?

[afabbro]

I thought this as well. Why on earth would you stop doing something that, according to TFA, counts as 1/3 of your revenue.

Because you're not making enough money at it to justify the management headaches.

Re:What?

[Guy Harris]

A company spin off is a very, very different thing from simply closing down the PC factories and shredding the plans.

But both of them result in Hewlett-Packard no longer manufacturing personal computers, so I, at least, think of both of them as "HP exiting the PC business". Perhaps you don't, and perhaps some others don't, but perhaps some others do, e.g. Larry Dignan or IBM's CTO or the authors of this piece.

Re:What?

[wavedeform]

Which would you rather have? $100 each from one thousand people, or $1 each from one million people?

If I had to do a similar amount of work for each transaction in both cases, I'll take $100 from 1000 people, please.

Re:What?

[CCW]

Your island example is bad. Shirts are valueless (or of equivalent value) in this context, so trading them doesn't create wealth.

Now if one half of the island had bird nests full of eggs, and the other had water, two people on the respective halves of your island could trade and both would have more wealth because on the bird side, plentiful food is worth LESS than the scant water and on the water side abundant water is worth LESS than the scarce eggs. Then trading is good for both parties, they both have more of what they most value than before. The sum of value across the island is higher, and thus there is more wealth.

If you don't like a resource example, one person could know how to weave hats and build boat hulls and the other could know how to weave nets and sails. Trade creates more wealth. This is extremely basic economic theory.

You are wrong about where wealth comes from. At the end of the day every manufacturing plant turns steel/glass/wire and plastic into a bunch of products worth more than the inputs. That directly creates wealth and it doesn't have anything to do with natural resource discoveries or improvements in efficiency. This is true at the craftsman level as well- working a bunch of reeds into a useful basket directly creates wealth - the basket is worth more than the reeds.

Re:What?

[sunspot42]

HP has already stolen market share from DELL because they have become so good at making PC's

Actually, HP clawed back some of the marketshare they lost to Dell in the PC business because the nature of the PC business changed dramatically over the past decade. From the mid-'90s until the middle of the last decade PC's were still pretty expensive, generally north of $1,000 a piece here in the US, and you could save a considerable amount of money by customizing your PC to sport only those features you really wanted. You could save even more by going mail order, potentially slashing the amount you paid in taxes and getting fresher inventory than the local CompUSA or Circuit City had in stock.

All of those factors favored Dell, with their customize online, custom build, mail order model. You could save a couple hundred bucks going with Dell and get just what you wanted. Unfortunately for Dell all of those factors have since changed. A decent PC can be had well south of $1,000 today - even laptops are cheaper than that now (and they've grown to dominate the market). Customization doesn't save you hundreds of dollars anymore - you can generally buy your way into a much better class of computer for just $200, complete with whatever features you were seeking and then some. Laptops don't have as many customization options, anyhow. And even the cheapest PCs ship with rich feature sets to begin with. The fact that PCs are so cheap also means there isn't much money to be saved in sales taxes by going mail order. And inventory at the few remaining PC retailers - mostly Staples, Costco and Best Buy - is amazingly fresh compared to the old days because there's so much turnover. Retail distribution favored HP and its enormous distribution network, established for their printers, over Dell's direct to the consumers model.

HP leaving the PC market opens an enormous opportunity for Apple to move into the enterprise space with their post-PC products.

Re:What?

[dakameleon]

In the "mobile PC" segment, if you could iPads as PCs, Apple emerges as a clear winner. The CNet article states total PC sales as 19 million for the quarter - the link there says Apple sold a smidge over 10 million iPads in the same period, so Apple could certainly hold its own in an overall "PC" sales ranking.

Re:What?

[Compuser]

First, about trade. Your example is of a good trade which stimulates usage of resources available and seeking out new ones. Notice that the trade was highly uncorrelated - different parties sold different goods and everything was demand driven. My point was that much of trade is correlated - where people buy inherently worthless or not quite so worthy trinkets because it is a fad (yes, including real estate a few years ago). This does not stimulate anything - yes, stuff is being produced to fulfill demand but demand is artificial and so the entire trade is unsustainable. The things it stimulates are not really needed and dissolve at first market crash. In that respect, trading shirts when the only demand is food is a good metaphor. this is what we were doing a few years back essentially. We need new sources of energy (new food so to speak) but we trade trinkets like houses which do not address the problem and do not stimulate dealing with the problem.

As far as where wealth comes from... Uh, do you know what went into making every single plant that makes stuff? Discoveries of how to make stuff and the natural resources. Nothing else. That is where wealth comes from. If no new discoveries are made, what will happen is that first every product will turn into a commodity with near zero margins, then when resources run out, the product will cease to be made. The plants are just a physical realization of research so you are making my point here. And for sure, plants have little to do with trade. Trade just connects supply and demand, it does not enable supply side and does not guarantee that demand is organic/sustainable. So healthy trade provides positive feedback for wealth creation, it even helps establish what wealth is in many cases but it is not responsible for wealth creation.

Re:What?

[shmlco]

HP also said they were going to concentrate on printing, but...

People, including business people, are buying iPads.

They're carrying around iPhones and iPads stuffed to the gills with ebooks, textbooks, manuals, and reams of PDF documents. They're walking around with constant 3G access to the Internet and to corporate intranets. There have apps specifically designed for accessing corporate dashboards and information systems (Roambi). There are Wyse and Citrix apps.

So, given the above, does it strike ANYONE as being a particularly good time to concentrate on PRINTERS???

Re:What?

[grrrl]

printers with wifi (or 3G)... yes! ;D sometimes you just can't beat dead tree, and I'd like to be able to print from phone or ipad more easily

but I get where you're going :p

hand held wifi printers for travel etc would be good, but I guess thats not going to give you corporate-service-plan type monies

Re:What?

[williamhb]

A profit is far more than just making moneyIt shows that you are creating wealth.

Not true. "Pay us 10% everything or we'll torch your shop in the middle of the night" can be very profitable but creates no wealth. "Oh look, I just grew a banana. I'm feeling charitable, so why don't you have it" is unprofitable but creates wealth. That wealth creation goes hand in hand with profits is an assumption in many theories but it does not always hold in practice.

Re:What?

[CCW]

The fact that bad trades and unstable market bubbles happen doesn't negate the value of trade. People do stupid things sometimes. Sometimes large groups of people do stupid things..

The stimulation for dealing with a problem like a need for new sources of energy is the increase in cost of the old sources. You appear to think it would be better to have a top down directed system where people are told what to produce based on your determination of the relative value, but I think it works better when people make their own decisions based on their perception of value (google "invisible hand") If people want trinkets more than fuel, they should buy trinkets. If you want fuel more than trinkets, spend your money on fuel - that demand will stimulate production.

You are completely ignoring the time and capital investment required to make production facilities. This is known as "barrier to entry" and prevents the rapid commoditization of many products. You are also assuming an asymptotic endpoint of zero-margin production while discounting the wealth that can be accumulated before that endpoint is reached. My wealth point has nothing to do with trade - it was to address your statement

  "Wealth comes from two places and two places only: new natural resource discoveries and improvements in efficiency (i.e. scientific, technological and business process discoveries)."

Which totally discounts work, skill and time. Piano tuners don't have any discoveries, or consume natural resources, yet they create wealth by the hour. The service economy runs almost entirely outside of your overly narrow wealth creation definition. Since it is the largest component to the US GDP, I think you've missed something important and should rethink it.

Re:What?

[Compuser]

Piano tuners create no wealth. They are much like a stable cell in your body: they do something and consume some resources but they do not contribute to the growth of your body. When you grow from baby to adult, that growth fundamentally comes from the nutrients you ingest (new natural resources) - nothing in your body generates growth without new resources. And conversely, take away new resources and the body wastes away (go see some concentration camp pictures circa WW2). Likewise, society only grows when new resources become available or new ways to use resources are found (kind of like human survival improved after a mutation which allowed people to process lactose and hence drink milk).

You might understand this from a different perspective. How many piano tuners does a society have? Well, there is some market size for that niche. What determines the niche size? Global economy. What determines the size of the global economy? Certainly not the size of the niches otherwise we'd be back to circular reasoning. So what is it? Well, we know many economies that collapsed due to internal contradictions so that can set the size of the economy. But the maximum achievable size is set by resource availability.

Now as far as planned vs market economies - I did not pass judgement on either. Market economies are susceptible to bubbles while centralized economies are susceptible to corruption, poor decision making due to power struggles in the bureaucracy, and hubris of top managers. So no, centralized economies do not look good by comparison. Quit putting words in my mouth. My point was simply that trade is not an inherently good thing.

Re:What?

[Compuser]

One more thing: It is possible for human labor to contribute to economic growth but only if the worker was not adequately compensated. So in the extreme case, if you take a grown man and stop feeding him while demanding work then anything he will do until he dies is indeed pure growth of the economy. However, assuming efficient labor market and fair compensation, commodity labor does not create wealth. And the only reason non-commodity labor like research generates wealth is that it is never fairly compensated for (you just cannot fairly compensate the inventor of the wheel with all the resources of stone age economy).

Re:What?

[Tacvek]

Sure, spinning off a company looks like exiting a market to wall street, but to the consumer it looks like "HP is now known as XYZZY Corp."

In the short term, the only difference consumers will notice is the new name-tag and website.

That is very different from buying a system, and then when you go to get support, you find out that no support is offered anymore, and that the warranties are now honored only by refunding the purchase price. That is also known as exiting a market, and is an entirely different beast.

Re:What?

[shmlco]

Not to mention the fact that for the most part we've stopped printing photos. Photos now appear instantly on Facebook, are shared on Flickr, and are synced to our phone and tablets.

Re:What?

[zuperduperman]

If HP decides they suck at PCs and close down, that doesn't mean those jobs and resources are lost. It means they have to be reallocated.

This sort of abstract economics bugs me. Yes in theory in a perfect world and a closed system with perfect frictionless economics you might be right. In practice, the system is not closed and not frictionless. When those jobs go they a) may exit the closed system (eg: disappear from the US and appear in China, India or elsewhere) or b) if they do reappear there may be a tremendous cost associated with that (people losing jobs, defaulting on their loans, marriages breaking up, children scarred by trauma of financial hardship ...). There's no fundamental law that guarantees the net positives will outweigh the net negatives of any given event like this that happens. You can have your theory about the general market and how overall it moves humanity forward and also an opinion that an individual transaction is destructive and a net negative and be totally consistent.

HP should have got on board w/ android

[schwaang]

Looking at their WebOS powered tablet at BestBuy next to the iPad2 and android units like the Galaxy Tab, all I can think is WTF, HP?
But thanks for buying my Palm shares.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Anybody here remember Apollo Computer? HP9000/400? Nah, me either.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[hoggoth]

I love my Apollo workstations. I still have two of them.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Anonymous Coward]

I do -- and DomainOS.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get it.

30 years ago, UNIX was growing everywhere. Not everyone was happy with it (see the
UNIX-hater's Handbook for a pithy summary of the main reasons), but this OS was going places. Thanks to what some would call an unfair advantage in the UNIX-centric nature of the entire internet protocol suite, UNIX gained an early lead in internet sites (this was before the "web", you know), which forms or derivatives of UNIX maintain to the present day, after a soft spot in the early 90s.

As time went on, UNIX was forked repeatedly and cloned as it spread; all the offspring were recognizably UNIX (even the ones I'm not supposed to call UNIX), but not quite compatible. Sometimes this fragmentation slowed its growth dramatically, but overall it kept growing.

A generation of nerds and geeks grew up tinkering with one UNIX or another (mostly L:inux, but a sizable chunk of FreeBSD users, too) on their PCs -- some went on to become hackers, some never really made it, but almost without exception, they all saw UNIX (or "Linux" as many of them called it, not realizing most of the things they liked were the commonalities of UNIX, rather than the specifics that set Linux apart) as one of the best systems for a PC.

At the same time, Apple was looking for a new OS to replace their aging Mac OS, and settled on a modified version of one of the less-successful UNIX variants, NeXTSTEP, creating a new UNIX variant specifically for their line of PCs. Still growing, from the server and hobbyist realm to mainstream desktops.

Eventually, mobile computers became first possible, then affordable and widespread. As computer performance had grown, all the popular versions of UNIX had grown with it, and while they were still recognizable as the same system, they weren't readily deployable on mobile devices until they far exceeded the performance of the PDP-11 the C-language version of UNIX first ran on. Eventually, though, they got fast enough, and recognizable UNIX implementations began to show up; besides a number of small outfits and hobbyist ports to WinCE hardware, got in the game. Sharp was first, with their Zaurus, and Nokia followed with the 770. Even though Apple and Google were taking UNIX systems, stripping the userspace, and replacing it with strange "mobile-optimized" front-ends, Palm eventually joined Nokia (Sharp had dropped out by now, at least in the US market) and brought out WebOS.

And then... Nokia ditched Maemo, though they said that was to focus on MeeGo, a joint venture to produce the same sort of real, recognizable UNIX system, but now it would run on more devices, by more manufacturers. Then they dropped MeeGo after making two phones, only one sold to the general public. As I said, Sharp had already left the market. Now HP had bought Palm, but they seemed to think WebOS was a great thing; they had plans, and announced multiple new devices running it.

Now, HP decides they're losing money on it, wants to spin it off, and on a self-professed "News for Nerds" site, so many comments like yours suggest that not even nerds who cut their teeth on Linux and BSD really cared for WebOS; they like Android because it's shinier.

So what is this? We've seen 3 decades+ of growth, and now... it all ends here. Is there such a thing as "peak UNIX"? Cause this sure looks like it from here. The world has moved on, Moore's law has finally given us enough computing power to generate all the shiny bling we need to blind ourselves to what's under the hood.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[rikkitikki]

and the damn Rectangle Manager :)

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[chill]

I do. I still have nightmares about December 1999 when the version of DomainOS we were running did its equivalent of Y2K.

Part of the boot code used signed ints, part unsigned. In early December their counter rolled over and part of the boot process thought it was like 4,000 B.C.. And...it was waiting until 30 seconds after it started, in December of 1999 before continuing.

A 6,000 year delay loop isn't good for boot times.

Our vendor notified us the day before Thanksgiving. The bastard.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Culture20]

Eventually, though, they got fast enough, and recognizable UNIX implementations began to show up; besides a number of small outfits and hobbyist ports to WinCE hardware, got in the game. Sharp was first, with their Zaurus, and Nokia followed with the 770.

And HP/Compaq even dedicated money to a lab for a Linux distro for their iPaq handhelds, complete with a compile farm for ordinary users to ssh into.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Miamicanes]

I think it's more like, Android achieved critical mass with software, so to prevail over Android at this point you'd have to not just be better -- you'd have to be "part the Red Sea and redefine the concept and very foundation of tablet-based computing" better. Or give up on trying to license WebOS as a commercial project, and work on getting Cyanogen et al to start porting it to popular Android phones as an alternative. But hey, four or five years ago, I was one of the ones screaming that Palm's only chance in hell to reboot its US developer ecosystem would have been to have ported it to the HTC PPC6700 and give it away along with their preview SDK (which would have instantly turned one of the most popular PDA phones of ~2006 into potential Palm Linux phones, and allowed Palm to bypass the slow wheels of change in Sprint/Verizon management and gotten them directly onto both networks through the back door). Obviously, that didn't happen, Palm further fucked up by tainting WebOS and supporting only lame web-based applications instead of making the whole SDK available from Day One, and pretty much finished it off by letting Sprint have an exclusive deal on WebOS phones for half a year while Europeans were begging for a GSM version, and hobbling their alleged flagship phone with subpar hardware to boot.

Palm's past ~6 year history is an epic study in how you can fuck up and destroy one of the most popular products in history, alienate 99% of your developers in the process (carriers didn't kill Cobalt... PODS did. Plain and simple, it sucked balls compared to CodeWarrior). HP was just the final chapter. Instead of trying to reinvent WebOS again, HP should have just cranked out a phone with the hardware specs of a Nexus One with a big 3500mAH battery and blown everyone away through brute force. Sexy consumer finesse can come next year. When you have almost no thirdparty software to speak of, priority one HAS to be jumpstarting your developer ecosystem. Developers don't care about thin and sexy, as long as the hardware is totally cool. Palm (and later, HP) got too caught up with premature optimization, and ended up missing the boat while Windows Mobile sailed off into the abyss and the Android Army arrived to take its place.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

That's a great story. Beats mine about how HP field service showed up (unexpected) a day or two before New Years Eve 1999 wanting to provisionally change (depending on stepping number) some chip on the motherboard (that involved pulling the CPU heatsink to look at it) of my (production!) N-class servers. Can't remember if they were Merced or Monticello, but they were the absolute shit at the time. They basically said that if I didn't let them, they weren't sure they'd be able to support me if anything Y2K-bad happened. So I had to call half a dozen manufacturing plants in the middle of the afternoon to tell them why their manufacturing system was going off line for a couple of hours. Good times.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[shugah]

Steve, that you? How's that injunction going? Is your plan for the courts to maintain your market share?

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Guy Harris]

Thanks to what some would call an unfair advantage in the UNIX-centric nature of the entire internet protocol suite, UNIX gained an early lead in internet sites (this was before the "web", you know)

So what about it was "UNIX-centric"? (No, "protocols like FTP were text-based, so they were UNIX-centric" isn't it - Dating back at least as far as RFC 454, in 1973, when UNIX was about 2 years old and not very ARPANETted, a text-command-based FTP was being proposed.)

Even though Apple and Google were taking UNIX systems, stripping the userspace, and replacing it with strange "mobile-optimized" front-ends,

At least for Apple, the "userspace" you're referring to presumably refers to the UI, rather than, say, the system library, which, in iOS is very much like the Mac OS X system library, i.e. it's what a UNIX person would call a libc (even if it's called libSystem). For Google, it's a bit different blah blah blah Dalvik blah blah blah, but at least as I read What is the NDK?, it sounds as if they're offering at least some low-level UNIX APIs to native applications:

[The NDK] provides a set of system headers for stable native APIs that are guaranteed to be supported in all later releases of the platform:

• libc (C library) headers
• libm (math library) headers

...

So what is this? We've seen 3 decades+ of growth, and now... it all ends here. Is there such a thing as "peak UNIX"? Cause this sure looks like it from here. The world has moved on, Moore's law has finally given us enough computing power to generate all the shiny bling we need to blind ourselves to what's under the hood.

"What's under the hood" is still UNIX (in the "even if you're not supposed to call it UNIX", i.e. the "little if any of it is based on AT&T UNIX code and it wasn't certified by running it against the Single UNIX Specification validation suite, but it's still recognizably UNIX in its the low-level APIs", sense) for the two fastest growing smartphone OSes, the top tablet OS (same as one of the two smartphone OSes), and at least one of the other tablet OSes (same as the other smartphone OS). Most application developers for those OSes probably don't end up using any of the low-level UNIX APIs in their code, however.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[realityimpaired]

HP should have just cranked out a phone with the hardware specs of a Nexus One with a big 3500mAH battery

So... you want them to come out with a phone that has a larger battery than my laptop?

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[afidel]

HP 9000 is the system that will not die, HP's been trying to kill it for more than a decade but enough people are throwing money at them that they keep extending the deadline.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[arbulus]

And what exactly is your idea of a "real smartphone or tablet"?

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Bill_the_Engineer]

What about the other Android powered tablets that are not making their sales goal?

Besides WebOS was bring something unique to the market not yet another android tablet. HP just did a half ass job of building market traction. HP never really did well in the consumer market. They used to have the majority of the laser printer market, yet they allowed others to step in and take market share away. After spinning off all their profitable divisions in the past, I don't think HP really knows what they want.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[bennomatic]

I do. I spent many happy hours on a small network of Apollo workstations back in my university days. Of course, that was in the early days of the web, when it was easier to find what you wanted on Usenet than via any HTTP browser.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[schwaang]

"What's under the hood" is still UNIX[...]

Indeed. It's *nix under the hood for iOS and android just as it is for webOS (sitting on a Linux kernel just like android, no?). This debacle is hardly a case of Betmax vs. VHS in the sense of objectively superior underlying tech losing out to non-technical market factors. The TouchPad simply fails to distinguish itself in the current marketplace *and* has no "tapes" available to play on it.

Now HP might have been able to hang on to a proprietary platform (webOS above Linux) and aim for a profitable niche: enterprises are going to be flooded with pads, and they are going to be more friendly and less price sensitive to units that lock-down and integrate with IT policies. Apple doesn't have a history of focusing on that, and android's openness will frighten any sensible corporate IT department.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Apollo! How about Masscomp?

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Miamicanes]

Your laptop's battery is larger than ~4cm x 4cm x 1/2cm? Because that's approximately the size of my Epic4G's 3500mAH extended battery. If your laptop is able to run with a battery that small, I'm impressed.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Bassman59]

Anybody here remember Apollo Computer? HP9000/400? Nah, me either.

Yep, I remember running Mentor Graphics EDA software on them. The company bought some 68020 machines and it was a Big Effin' Deal when they were upgraded (mobo swap) to 68030s.

I can't believe we did Real Work on those boxes.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Anonymous Coward]

Jealous, bitch? LOLZZZZ!!!!
 
Keep sucking on that open source dick. Punk ass trick.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Miamicanes]

>. HP just did a half ass job of building market traction.

I'd say it's more like, they jumped the gun and tried too hard to monetize it too quickly. When the G1 came out, Google was smart. They created a phone that was a tiny bit underwhelming, but was mostly a fully-functional hardware reference platform that worked perfectly on at least one major US network, and worked equally well overseas. They didn't expect to ever make a cent from the G1's sales, because they understood that the G1's entire purpose was to *exist* and not flop. Period, full stop, end of story. Even then, Google's own mistake was obvious in retrospect -- they didn't accommodate AT&T's frequencies, and they didn't have a CDMA version. If you look at Android's growth, you have a series of small blips during the G1 era, then suddenly an overnight explosion in Q4 2009 when the Hero hit Sprint and the Droid hit Verizon. The point is, Google didn't even *try* to make real money on Android until it was well into its second generation of hardware. HP, meanwhile, had its executives chomping at the bit thinking they could roll out a fairly expensive device with minimal developer support and little in the way of real thirdparty software, and magically have it take off into a profitable project. When their delusional fantasy got shattered, they had nowhere left to go.

HP would have been FAR better off to have "softly" introduced WebOS as a product available for free for installation on select pre-existing Android hardware, and worried about making actual money from licensing fees on the NEXT round of hardware sold with it in the box. And to have changed the stupid name. I know it's an inaccurate perception, but even now, every time I hear the name "WebOS", I cringe & think of a lame half-assed web-based API built on Javascript that just kind of sucks the way 99.9% of browser-based apps do... but worse, because the underlying hardware itself is slower than the browser I've run sucky slow Javascript-based web apps in for comparison. It's a shame HP ran it into the ground, because it would have been good to have another good Unix-based mobile OS around to keep Android on its toes (I'll freely admit my prejudice, and state that I hate Apple & have looked down upon them since the day in middle school when I found out that the Mac didn't even have an apparent programming language AVAILABLE, let alone BASIC in the box. For the kids here, I believe that to actually write real software for a first-gen Mac, you actually had to buy a Lisa)

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Tamran]

Well stated.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[UnknowingFool]

"What's under the hood" is still UNIX (in the "even if you're not supposed to call it UNIX"

According to the Open Group which owns the UNIX trademark and conduct certification, OS X 10.5 on Intel and OS X 10.6 are certified UNIX. OS X is also POSIX compliant.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Guy Harris]

According to the Open Group which owns the UNIX trademark and conduct certification, OS X 10.5 on Intel and OS X 10.6 are certified UNIX. OS X is also POSIX compliant.

Yes, I'm quite aware of that; perhaps I should've said "regardless of whether you're supposed to call it UNIX" rather than trying too hard to parallel the "even the ones I'm not supposed to call UNIX" of the person to whom I was responding.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet iOS isn't UNIX(tm), because certification applies to a particular OS, not to all derivatives. Moreover, despite iOS not being as un-UNIXy as the GGP seems to think, I highly doubt it actually complies with the SUS...

So GP was right, and your post contributes... what, exactly? Common information that everyone knows and everyone but you knows isn't relevant to the discussion, that's what.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb ass, little apple bitch.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[unixisc]

Killing PA-RISC in favor of Itanium was a big mistake on HP's part. Itanium now has nothing more that PA didn't have - even Windows Server is being dropped as far as support goes, as is RHEL and Oracle. Had HP kept PA, they'd have had all that legacy software, and could have either altered HP/UX or retrofitted Linux or BSD to support the platform. Legacy support would have continued. And HP would still have been strong in the workstation market. Once Itanium goes - b'cos Intel can't keep supporting it indefinitely - wonder what HP will use that differentiates them from others? Maybe they can spin off their Integrity Servers along w/ their PC division, and let those guys kill it if they wish.

Re:HP should have got on board w/ android

[wwphx]

Heh. After reading this I stopped at Staples on the way home to look at one. They did indeed have it on display, and it wouldn't turn on.

I was amused.

Sad, sad, sad.

[jamrock]

I hope that HP will somehow weather the turbulence and emerge stronger than ever. This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this. And I'm especially saddened that WebOS never really had a chance to strut it's stuff. I'm a very happy iPad owner, but I have the greatest respect and admiration for what the Palm team accomplished with WebOS's interface, and I was hoping that it would take off and keep Apple on their toes.

I personally blame Carly Fiorina for the travails of a once-proud company.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Sez Zero]

I hope that HP will somehow weather the turbulence and emerge stronger than ever.

Interesting article from Business Insider saying that becoming software only company riskier, but more lucrative. Also, next step is to buy RIM?

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[jamrock]

That's an insightful observation, and of course the best example that HP could hope to emulate is IBM's brilliantly successful transformation from a hardware to a service solutions company under the superb leadership of Louis Gerstner.

But why on earth would they even consider getting into bed with RIM? RIM's problems stem directly from their bizarre Frankenstein's monster leadership (2 CEO's and 3 COO's? Seriously??), and management appears to be in serious denial about the nature of their competition. Plus it seems as if the board doesn't see anything wrong with how the company is being led, so don't expect the situation there to change anytime soon.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I personally blame Carly Fiorina for the travails of a once-proud company.

Yep. Although, Lew Platt gave her a good running start. But she (and Itanic) really finished it off.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[shipofgold]

I agree that they were a once proud company. I interviewed with them in 1981, when they were regarded as one of the best places to work. But I think they took their eye off the ball and started screwing their customers with shoddy products that they wouldn't even support. I had the misfortune of purchasing one of their DV9000 laptops...with the overheating left hinge problem which freezes and then cracks the case when you try to open it. Typical design problem that HP knew about pretty early in the game...lots of frustruation with them and CompUSA (their authorized service center) trying to get a repair out of them....even during the warrenty period when they told me it was because I dropped the laptop. When it happened a second time 4 years after I bought the laptop, I called HP customer support, and was told they have dropped all support for that product...can't even order the parts. Together with other stories of non-support to their consumer grade customers, I think they are gettting what they deserve.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation

No, that company is Agilent.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. I'd like to see them go under. They should sell their printer division to a company that's currently named "Agilent", and then they should just sell off all their assets and shut their doors. Then Agilent should rename themselves "HP".

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

The company that (helped to) build silicon valley is now called Agilent. HP kicked them out years ago. Of course Agilent then split off several pieces too...

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that Fiorina and Hurd were not cut from the same cloth as Lew Platt, Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett. But the article amd your reaction are hyperbolic. I have worked for HP for sixteen years, and always have been relatively proud to do so. However, it strikes me that many people don't have a clue what we do as a company.

We have a market share of around 70 percent in Blade server infrastructure, we have a blossoming networking division, we have a huge software division, we do still sell the odd printer, digital printing press, digital offset printer and plotter, we have quite a lively data storage portfolio in which you'll still find anything from XP's to Lefthand iSCSI boxes, and we still have a sizable business computing division that does HP-UX, non stop, tru and vms.

To say that HP just got out of the hardware business is hyperbolic and untrue. It's looking at potentially getting rid of PSG, but that's hardly where the gravy is. Which is why they do this in the first place, i guess.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

HP has a snooty attitude that has cost them immensely. Regardless of Mark Hurds failings, he had the business running well. He is now helping Oracle turn around. Carly is a thief and a fraud who got by on a (questionably) pretty face and big talk. She almost killed Lucent without even being in the corner office. HP needs to get back to its engineer roots, not its bean counter current culture. Make things that engineers would like, and you will have a market again.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[HiThere]

The HP you're remembering was run by engineers. Good ones. It doesn't bear much resemblance at all to the current company of the same name.

P.S.: Remember what happened to Apple the last time Steve Jobs left? The Steves were what made Apple what it became. Jobs has a passion for elegant design. And that's made Apple what it currently is. Now he's in the process of leaving, and I expect Apple to translate into just another company run by quarter-to-quarter bean counters.

Management that's only expert in management can't run a star company. And only sometimes can it keep a really good company from failing totally. But that's *NOT* what they teach people in management school.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

They do anything that differentiates them from Dell or many of the other makers. They've shipped Windows boxes, printers and scanners that are all run of the mill. They don't look nicer, they don't perform better, they aren't much cheaper and so on.

There's no vision at all. They buy up tech and bastardise it into another "me too" product just like all the other big tech firms.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[arbulus]

That's a line from the AT&T playbook.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

PSG may not be a profit generator, but IBM salespeople have long been chagrined at the Lenovo deal because HP started kicking their asses on big fulfillment deals because laptops and desktops were part of the deal. A loss of PSG will mean more of your *server* business will go to Dell than you'd expect.

(been there, done that)

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.

Too bad those divisions were spun off years ago. HP lost its way with Fiorina and never found it.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Grishnakh]

Yep, and while they're not exactly the greatest company to be a customer of, they're very successful.

I'd rather see the venerable HP name go to Agilent and their T&M equipment, and it'd also be nice if they got back into the printer business and made rock-solid, bulletproof printers like they used to (not the crappy inkjet kind with overpriced ink and other consumer trash).

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

The company that USED to be HP is now called Agilent. HP is all the consumer bloatware crap that all the real EEs at Agilent cast off.

http://www.agilent.com/

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

And I'm especially saddened that WebOS never really had a chance to strut it's stuff.

ditto. There's prolly a parallel universe where Nokia are doing massively well after purchasing Palm!

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[couchslug]

The old HP is dead, and I'd like to see the new HP die as punishment for snuffing the old HP.

Fuck the name, just die.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[tomhudson]

The Business Insider article is really stupid, not the least when it says HP needs to buy RIM - especially for this reason:

and it needs to buy scale and distribution and that's RIM.

RIM isn't a distributor - its' phones are distributed by the telcos and other mobile phone distributors. And RIM's tablet is as much of a non-seller as HP's - and the reason given - HP's mobile software would supposedly complement RIM's hardware - is completely bogus. They run on completely different operating systems. It would make more sense for HP to be bought up by Samsung or LG.

If anyone is going to buy RIM, it will be Google. They have enough cash on hand to pay the same 60% premium over current market that they paid for Motorola Mobile, and they'd not only get another juicy chunk of mobile and security patents, but also access to RIM's end-to-end encryption. Android already is the #1 smartphone OS with 48% of the market (compared to Apple at 19% - WP7 is a joke at 1% and declining) - imagine giving Android phones and tablets the end-to-end secure messaging that the Blackberry has? Business and government would be mandating Android as the preferred platform.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agilent Technologies is the company that built Silicon Valley. The computer side kept the name, but the "real" HP is still going strong.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[dreamer-of-rules]

You're thinking of Agilent.

HP spun off all the cool engineering stuff into a separate company because it was like "too hard to compete with IBM and Dell when the CEO has to spend precious time on 'worthless stuff'" like cesium clocks, heart defibrillators (though maybe sold off by now), inkjet-printed DNA Micro-array scanning chips*, satellite testing equipment, optical "bubble" network switches, and way, way, more, all of which went to make Agilent in 1999. I've always been a little disappointed that the calculator division stayed with HP.

HP may have kept the name, but little else of value.

* The DNA micro-arrays probably didn't exist then, but they are at Agilent now.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Sez Zero]

RIM's problems stem directly from their bizarre Frankenstein's monster leadership (2 CEO's and 3 COO's? Seriously??), and management appears to be in serious denial about the nature of their competition.

It seems like a good scenario for a take-over.
"Hey, you've got a company and product, but you're doing it all wrong. We're going to buy you, and fire all your executives."

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did I get it right? You are sad that WebOS didn't make it. But it's a happy iPad owner.

For me this is like "To bad he died, oh if I could just hold my finger and not have pulled the trigger..." If you wanted WebOS to have a chance why in hell didn't you bought a TouchPad? You are part of the market that said NO to WebOS so don't be sorry for it.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[The O Rly Factor]

The day HP died was the day I read an article where the journalist asked HP's HP-UX team if the company was ever going to do anything new with VMS. The team's response was "What's VMS?"

Rest in pieces, HP.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[sugar and acid]

The part of the company which founded silcon valley and made Hewlett Packard was spun out as Agilent. They make high end test equipment and instrumentation for a wide range of markets (electronics testing to biotech).

HP was the well known brand name that was kept to sell to the wider consummer market in PCs and IT equipment. There was a time when HP could make computers and it fitted with the high end analytical equipment philosophy in terms of quality. But the realities of the PCs in the late 90's (and following through to now) meant that they sacrificed the brand name to the IT PC consumer market, while putting the quality, innovative and true silcon valley element into Agilent.

Re:Sad, sad, sad.

[Starker_Kull]

I disagree. I'd like to see them go under. They should sell their printer division to a company that's currently named "Agilent", and then they should just sell off all their assets and shut their doors. Then Agilent should rename themselves "HP".

Where's a +1 mod point when you need one?

I still have an old HP48GX I used to use hours a day when I tutoring kids in physics and math. Donnelly's(sp?) book on SystemRPL and the underlying arch was a lot of what got me into digging into the internals of computers for fun.

I miss that HP and would like to have it back.

A shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I really liked my Palm Pre. I would have replaced it if HP had released a comparible replacement, but the Pre 3 still isn't out and I had to get an android phone. My new phone has more apps, a better browser and better hardware, but I still think WebOS's multitasking paradigm was better.

Re:A shame

[hawguy]

I really liked my Palm Pre. I would have replaced it if HP had released a comparible replacement, but the Pre 3 still isn't out and I had to get an android phone. My new phone has more apps, a better browser and better hardware, but I still think WebOS's multitasking paradigm was better.

I was really looking forward to the Pre3, I was thinking about moving from my Droid-1 to the Pre3 when it comes out, but I guess now I'll have to hold onto the Droid a little longer and see what comes out of the Google-Motorola deal.

Everybody Off!

[aapold]

Works like nothing.... well, just nothing.

What will Russell Brand do now?

Re:Everybody Off!

[Anonymous Coward]

Katy Perry

Divesting itself of its PC business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks to me like HP would be better off divesting itself of its CEO.

Re:Divesting itself of its PC business?

[Dunbal]

Yeah bring back Carly Fiorina! Oh wait...

HP becomes Palm?

[Sez Zero]

So HP is jettisoning all of the things that made it HP two years ago and just focusing on the stuff they got when they bought Palm? Does this sound like they are trying to blow up the company to anyone else?

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Shatrat]

Sounds more like they're trying to stop competing with Dell and start competing with IBM, reversing a Fiorina era trend.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[sandytaru]

Someone is just trying to finish the job that Fiorina started. I'm upset by this. I LIKE Hewlett Packard hardware. It's generally of good quality (you get occasional duds like with anything else, though) and you pretty much know what you're getting. I like having every single driver for every single computer ever made indexed on their website; it's saved my ass a few times over the years. Other companies are so hit and miss (either it's great and will last 10 years with a Dell, or its going to die in the first year) that some time ago I just switched to HP for everything since it felt less like a game of roulette and more like a game of checkers. Boring, but if you know what you're doing you'll come out ahead.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Dunbal]

Doesn't matter. Oracle will soon gobble them up.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Billly Gates]

They have been blowing up the company since Carly Fiona, became the CEO. The problems HP has are a decade old. They have no respect for employees and treat them like machines or cattle and now are shocked that after 10 years of layoffs month after month that only incompetence remains.

I could cite examples but I wont waste space. I am just dumbfounded and glad I do not own shares of the company. HP has a history of killing the goose with the golden eggs and focusing on things that do not make money instead. Ink is the only thing that gives them money thanks to the DMCA and chips in the cartridges. Once the patents expire on them they are screwed. All the good produces are under Agile now like medical equipment that HP used to make. No doubt, they will sell WebOS at a loss and focus on the 0 profit margin desktops instead and let a few billion shareholder money go to waste.

HP was a different place 10 years ago where they made high quality components and were known for great innovation and management.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an ex HP employee I have to permit myself a wry smile at this news.
They bought Compaq and proceeded to decimate the Professional Services (mostly inherited from DEC) and focus on producing PC's (with all the volume from Compaq). Then came 'the witch' aka Carly who culled most of what was left.
Then she bought and decimated them.
We all cheered when Carly was shown the door.
My joy was shortlived as I was out the door a few months later as my dept was axed almost overnight.

Now they do this 'U' Turn.

Sorry HP but the end is nigh. Sad to say this about a once proud company, a once great company to work for.
R.I.P

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[iplayfast]

I agree. I've got several dells and other generics and one HP box. The HP box is fantastic, and the next computer was going to be HP because of that.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[xtracto]

Hehe, I know of some guys that used to work at an HP research center in the UK who were let go. These guys were some of the most brilliant minds I have worked with and were first quality researchers . Too bad for HP

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Svartalf]

Reversing? And competing with IBM? Better be better at it than HP is right now.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reversing? And competing with IBM? Better be better at it than HP is right now.

Which, they aren't likely to. I know people who work for HP ... acquired by HP more specifically. (Hence posting as AC.)

HP bought them in order to be able to have some ability to deliver services, which is something they suck at. For a long time, the model at HP was to dump off expensive hardware to a client, and leave it up to the customer to operate it. A really expensive support agreement might get you some help.

And, when your customer is your own company ... well, I know friends who are supposed to be deploying hardware internally within HP to deliver services to clients. The problem, of course, is that even they can't find anyone within HP who can support the hardware... unless they can afford to hire the very expensive consultants who usually set this up. Which is even funnier when it's internal.

I highly doubt HP has the ability to compete as either a software or a services company. Other than HP-UX, and the WebOS they're apparently looking to spin off ... I'm not sure I can name a single piece of software HP makes.

I think HP might have really screwed themselves over the years. Even their enterprise hardware is all made by someone else as far as I know.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[hfranz]

HP Quality Center, which they bought from (or with?) Mercury Software.
And the software formerly known as HP Open View, now a bunch of products that are sold by the HP Software Division.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Wovel]

They are stopping webs development. Are you confused? HP will still make servers, storage, Service operations tools, et. Nyou know, the stuff that really makes HP, HP.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenVMS, which is still a rock solid product. Shame it ended up with HP.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[dakameleon]

HP Quality Center, which they bought from (or with?) Mercury Software.

If you've ever had the... pleasure... of working with that pile of steaming proverbial, you'll find a way to short HP shares soon enough.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up.

I too favor HP hardware. Their support is fantastic and they're rock solid - as IBM's products were once regarded. I even favor calculators and slide rules over one particularly well known competitor of theirs.
Something that HP should know - desktops/laptops sell servers. If I end up buying brand "X" desktops/laptops, I'm more likely to buy brand "X" servers.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Serious Callers Only]

So HP is jettisoning all of the things that made it HP two years ago and just focusing on the stuff they got when they bought Palm?

No, they are jettisoning all of the consumer side of the business, and focussing on business hardware and services, which potentially have a much higher return (if you are not competent at selling to consumers). Not necessarily a bad move if they can execute, though their nonsense about licensing WebOS does imply they don't have a clue.

Killing WebOS hardware kills WebOS - there is no way they will license it (who in their right mind would license tech that has no traction and has been a failure for the licensor?!??), and therefore no way they will make money on it. So they are not focussing on the stuff from Palm at all, they are killing it.

A real shame about WebOS, as it was one of the nicer mobile OSs, and all we will have left is iOS, Android and WinPhone (or whatever it is called these days).

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

as an HP employee , yes it does sound like they are in full route panic, sadly, wish it weren't so but they are not thinking this through. giving up and round one hasn't even sounded, thats just sad. They should've made the tablet a an android, at least then it would have had a ready made applications base.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

As the old saying goes: You're better destroying your own business than letting your competitors do it for you.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[TheRaven64]

They still sell VMS. Not a large market, but a profitable one.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[helios17]

With high density fragmentation charges....

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP (you mean Compaq), HP is no more, the real HP became a company called Agilent and it then lost its way. In the good old days HP stood for test equipment. Any decent lab or workshop had a bit of HP test equipment and a HP calculator. But I am old and those days are long past.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Compaqt]

Here's nerd hope that they'll release WebOS as full open source (since they're not going to be making any $ on it anyway), and then we can run it either on the Nokia N900 or the OpenMoko.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the same reasons we decided to go all Compaq years ago. Then HP bought Compaq and basically shutdown HP's own PC division. I'm glad to hear they are staying in the server and data center HW but Dell is beating them on cost by a mile. All corps look at today is cost. It's just the first step I'm afraid.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[swalve]

I may be wrong about this, but I don't think I am: all that you speak of is actually old Compaq standard procedure. Even the GUI you get at the driver sub-site is still mostly Compaq's.

And I agree, it is nice to have. IBM used to be pretty good about that too. Type in a nnnn-xxx model-type and you get everything there is. No silly internal/external distinctions.

Re:HP becomes Palm?

[hfranz]

I did have the misfortune to work with HP QuickTest Professional 10, so I know the pain.

I see no way for HP to compete with IBM in any area. Their server hardware is competitive but that's a competition with Dell or even Oracle rather than IBM. Maybe Apotheker wants to position HP in the vertical integration league and ultimately buy SAP? If you ask me, SAP is ripe for being bought up.

Sad day for WebOS

[NiteShaed]

I'm sorry to see it go, but I'm not at all surprised. I was a release-day Palm Pre buyer (Sprint), and I LOVED WebOS, but Palm really blew it. If there were more apps and the hardware was better (and upgraded more regularly) I would probably have gone with WebOS over Android or iOS, but in the end they left me hanging with no decent upgrade path (the Pre was an okay first-gen device, but really needed a major followup at the one-year mark) and they just didn't attract the app developers (I mean the major developers, the indie devs were fantastic!). End result, I'm now a happy Android user (HTC Evo), but I still miss the great parts of WebOS (Cards, Konami-code to root, etc).

Well, I'll just keep hoping that some of that good stuff makes it to Android eventually. Last I heard that's where most of the WebOS team ended up.....

As for WebOS in vehicles....great, just what I need. People have enough crap that they play with instead of paying attention to the road, now they're going to be swiping through multiple cards on their in-dash systems looking for things while careening down the highway? Wonderful....

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[jejones]

Yeah... It looks like I will end up going with Android for my next phone, even though its UI stinks on liquid helium compared with webOS's. OTOH, someday I may be able to buy a refrigerator that's easier to use than my phone. Great work, HP--and given that they're going for those niche markets, I presume they won't be open sourcing webOS either, which would be the one thing they could do to redeem themselves.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, someday I may be able to buy a refrigerator that's easier to use than my phone.

Dunno about you, but my fridge is already easier to use than my phone. Just plug and play. Sure it's all analog, manually open the door and put stuff in and take stuff out by hand, but it's pretty easy to use.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[Xtravar]

People have enough crap that they play with instead of paying attention to the road, now they're going to be swiping through multiple cards on their in-dash systems looking for things while careening down the highway? Wonderful....

My 2009 "luxury" car has a terrible UI where the radio should be. If the next generation has good software, I'd be more than happy. What I would like to see, though, are touch screens in the middle of the steering wheel so you don't have to turn your head to navigate through the menus. People are going to do this anyway, so may as well make it less dangerous.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[tomhudson]

What I would like to see, though, are touch screens in the middle of the steering wheel

I have one word for you - airbag. It's bad enough with people showing up in the ER with their finger shoved so far up their nose that their eyeball is displaced (stop picking your noses in traffic, people - it's not just gross, it can disfigure you for life) ... you want to smack them in the face with a touch screen at 200 mph?

Actually, on second thought ... if they're tweeting or facebooking at the time, smack away!

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[adolf]

I have one word for you - hinge. Use a hinge to have it move out of the way.

The cover over the airbag already does this. Adding a lightweight LCD+touchscreen wouldn't change that much.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[Voyager529]

What I would like to see, though, are touch screens in the middle of the steering wheel so you don't have to turn your head to navigate through the menus.

yes...because a touch screen is EXACTLY what I want sitting on top of an airbag, ready to fly at me at 200 miles an hour when I'm in an accident.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[tomhudson]

First, many (most?) newer airbags deploy by forcibly splitting the airbag cover on the steering wheel. The cover stays in place. example.

Second, the cover of the airbag is flexible. A steering-wheel-mounted LCD+touchscreen is not, and doesn't meet current safety requirements. Plus, having your hands fiddling around with a steering-wheel-mounted touch screen when the airbag explodes means you get to punch yourself in the face.

I guess that's one way to literally pound the message into people's heads that they shouldn't be texting when they're driving.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[TheRaven64]

I really liked the look of WebOS, but their developer site seemed to make it really hard for developers to get involved. I wanted to port an existing toolkit to WebOS. They eventually kind-of let you do that, but only via the games APIs, so no access to half of the things you wanted, so I gave up.

Re:Sad day for WebOS

[jseale]

I'm sure you'll see the webOS GUI remastered for motor vehicles and appliances. You might even see it in the next internet-enabled TV, Who would put it in one is the question. Sharp, Panasonic maybe? A couple of brands not known for their internet functionality. Maybe Nintendo will use webOS as the operating system in Wii U. Just sayin'.

Low margins

[symbolset]

Same reason IBM did it. Lenovo is crowing now about a huge bump in profits - something like $100M on $5B, or 2 percent.

Re:Low margins

[mjwx]

You have to work really hard for that PC dollar. In desktop PCs Microsoft makes several times the profit dollars per unit than HP or Lenovo does. Lenovo's crowing about "huge" $100M profits on $5B sales right now- about 2 percent. That's a lot of work and risk for $100M profit to be a good thing. You could blow $100M just by, say, building an initial run of half a million tablets that don't sell.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Razor thin margins in the HW sector are a result of strong competition which is a good thing for us consumers. As you said, manufacturers have to work hard for that dollar, which means people who produce crappy products or disrespect their customers will find it very hard to make a profit.

HP has been going down the toilet for years, bad HW, bad customer service, What else have you got in the HW business (EDS is also not doing to well ATM also I hear).

Re:Low margins

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahaha! That is the funniest thing I've read this week! Thin margins mean only companies who produce good products and respect their customers survive? What planet are you from? In the real world, thin margins means things like 'good' and 'respect' don't exist, because they cost money. Of course HP has been going down the toilet for years - their profits have been getting squeezed by the 'cheap is king' crowd such as yourself. Now it has gotten to the point where there is nothing else to cut, so they exit the business, which is really great for competition, isn't it.

Re:Low margins

[symbolset]

Commoditization of the hardware and razor thing margins leads to a rather severe avoidance of risk. Risk-taking is what drives innovation. That's why PC OEMs haven't given us anything amazing and revolutionary for fifteen years. They can't afford the risk. That's also why they dare not turn from Windows to new software platforms. To do so would be to decline Microsoft's co-marketing dollars which are not just all of their profits but offset a lot of their negative profits as well. This would drive the price of all of their products up, not just the innovative ones, guarantee failure in the marketplace.

Now with the shift to mobile they get the risk whether they choose to avoid it or not. It had to happen eventually. The increased risks of a dynamic market combined with razor thin margins make for a guaranteed money loser. Deprived of the freedom to innovate and build brand premium they have no choice but to fold their hand.

HP has just run the numbers and figured out what IBM did in 2005: the only way to win is not to play this game. There are other games to play that offer at least the hope of a good win someday.

Unfortunately they've also just announced that they're ready to spin off a major product line with no buyer in view, no plan. This will almost certainly result in rapid sales decline until people see what the outcome will be. This is the Elop maneuver.

Re:Low margins

[mjwx]

Commoditization of the hardware and razor thing margins leads to a rather severe avoidance of risk. Risk-taking is what drives innovation. That's why PC OEMs haven't given us anything amazing and revolutionary for fifteen years.

Actually the reason for that is that the customer base for computers do not want any radical changes. The risk averse enviroment is due to the use of PC's not the razor thin margins, manufacturers would like to charge more for a radically new product but no one would buy it, not because it's more expensive, but because it requires a radical change on their part.

Take a look at the conversion from x86 to x64. Despite consumer level x64 hardware being available for 7 odd years and x86 Windows for 5 years now, we are only just seeing a swing towards x64 as it's taken this long for the market to adapt to change.

In another 5-8 years we may actually have ARM computers competing with x86-64 despite the technology being ready now.

HP has just run the numbers and figured out what IBM did in 2005: the only way to win is not to play this game.

HP, much like IBM simply wasn't agile enough to stay in the game. Those of us forced to use HP equipment due to various corporate deals have known this for a long time.

Re:Low margins

[symbolset]

On a $400 PC at 5 percent HP makes $20. At 2 percent Lenovo makes $8. That's net of everything - services, warranty uplift, accessories, co-marketing subsidies from software and component partners, affiliate fees for installing crudware. Everything.

Agility has nothing to do with it. Windows 8 is coming. Apple is disrupting. Android is taking the world by storm. There's nothing HP can do about those things. There is no path to victory here. None at all.

24. The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.

- Sun Tzu

Re:Low margins

[serviscope_minor]

That's why PC OEMs haven't given us anything amazing and revolutionary for fifteen years.

Have you looked at the x86 computer market recently? It is a whole level of diversity and awesomeness. You can get PC hardware in so many niches that it is amazing. Here is a tiny smattering of the range of things available:

48 core opteron servers. They are amazingly fast and dense. Up to 1/2TB of RAM. It still amazes me to say that.

CF-U1 tablet. Not fast, but astonishingly robust. Nigh on indestructable.

Netbooks. I love my netbook, so much that I spent the same again on an SSD for it.

In fact everything from cheap-ass tiny laptops to expensive-ass tiny laptops to luggable workstations.

Laptops with builtin Wacom digitizers in the screen.

1kW Water cooled GPU workstations.

PC/104 (and all derivatives) stacks. In fact there is a whole world of embedded form-factors.

Miniture super low power, super small desktops.

Even standard desktops are pretty neat these days.

Super-quiet desktops.

Passively cooled desktops.

Super cheap desktops.

That's all stuff which can be had in the range of $200 to $15,000 and from a variety of vendors. If you want super expensive^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspecialist, then you can get rackmount machines which can hold a full rack width og GPUs stacked side by side or a machine with p to 2048 processors. Or those vendors which (kind of pointlessly IMO) cram a hugh bunch of atoms into a 10U rack.

I'm sure that there is a lot more that I've missed.

Re:Low margins

[tehcyder]

Looks like SOMEONE just had a nerdgasm.

TouchPad price?

[wsxyz]

So can I get a TouchPad for $100 now?

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then put android on it?

Re:TouchPad price?

[Tridus]

At $100 I'd get one even if I can't put Android on it. It'd be a very cheap tablet browser.

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

So can I get a TouchPad for $100 now?

And then put android on it?

Hell no; WebOS is nice, just need to use the Konami code and install the community softwares.

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

> So can I get a TouchPad for $100 now?

I am waiting for one for $100 too :)

Nice standard ARM Linux underneath... hacker-friendly...
No way I was gona pay $400 for it...

But if they are abandoning it.. and it will go on sale... for $100
this is a no-brainer...

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

So can I get a TouchPad for $100 now?

I am so getting one when they hit $200.
Linuxed

Re:TouchPad price?

[Osgeld]

agreed, I would buy that for a bill, and crap, even well after you got your 100 bucks worth out of it, grandma has a new large screen picture frame that plays home movies.

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe. Check Woot daily.

Re:TouchPad price?

[tomhudson]

They announce this right before the back-to-school season - the biggest time for laptop sales.

They just pulled a Nokia here - nobody is going to buy an HP laptop unless it is seriously discounted.

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get a Samsung tablet for free if you buy a Samsung TV:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/buy-a-samsung-3d-tv-at-bestbuy-this-weekend-and-get-a-free-galaxy-tab/

Re:TouchPad price?

[doconnor]

Ask and you shall receive.

Re:TouchPad price?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes

Software?

[marcroelofs]

I try to think of HP as in the context of 'software business' but my mind stays blank. Am I missing something? I mean, quitting PC hardware for something I can't remember?

Re:Software?

[sandytaru]

It's strange, since HP has been partnered up with VARs for years now. It was a cozy relationship - VAR sold the software and systems, and HP made the hardware. I could see dumping the VARs and going into the integrated solutions business for themselves, but you still need hardware for that to work.

Re:Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can think of is "bundled crapware" and "400 MB printer drivers".

Re:Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

They manufacture a lot of bloat that comes preinstalled on craputers.

Re:Software?

[jonbryce]

HP's software business is EDS, which is charging governments vast sums of money for IT systems that don't work.

Re:Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's right, and it's vastly more profitable than selling hardware.

Re:Software?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

All I can think of is "bundled crapware" and "400 MB printer drivers".

Heh. I just bought the wife a new HP laptop, and I've been two days getting rid of all the shovelware. Running Windows 7, it was using 1.4 Gig of RAM at idle immediately after a reboot. The number of bullshit services running was just mind-boggling.

Re:Software?

[gstoddart]

Heh. I just bought the wife a new HP laptop, and I've been two days getting rid of all the shovelware. Running Windows 7, it was using 1.4 Gig of RAM at idle immediately after a reboot. The number of bullshit services running was just mind-boggling.

I'm still not sure I got all of the crap off the wife's HP laptop ... it's a dual core (or quad core, I can't remember), which had 4GB of RAM and a decently big hard drive.

It was so full of crap that it couldn't even rip a CD without vast amounts of skipping and digital noise. I'm sorry, but on spec that's a fast machine ... in reality, it's the most pathetically slow piece of junk I've seen in a while.

That, and the completely strange keyboard I've never seen elsewhere that is almost unusable. If that's what HP is making, good riddance.

Re:Software?

[Culture20]

Same here. They *are* a hardware company. Printers, desktop computers, laptops, servers. Hopefully they mean that they'll rebrand all the hardware as compaq and spin it off or something.

Re:Software?

[Osgeld]

mid to large unix systems

Re:Software?

[Lifyre]

EDS has actually done some pretty impressive work in a few areas especially when you consider where they had to start. The problem is now that they've done the majority of the technical stuff their shortcomings have begun to overshadow any past success. They EPIC fail at customer service, major problems took over a week to fix (usually about how long it took get a tech on site) and minor issues like not being able to print (usually because drivers were needed) could take months.

This was with trained people on site they wouldn't allow to have administrative privileges.

Re:Software?

[afabbro]

EDS has actually done some pretty impressive work in a few areas especially when you consider where they had to start.

Sure, in 1975 they weren't that bad.

2011? It's like calling Linksys customer service.

Re:Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

> HP's software business is EDS, which is charging governments vast sums of money for IT systems that don't work.

Don't be an ass.

" ACS will take over from HP Enterprise Services, the incumbent (then operating as EDS) on the contract for 23 years. "

EDS/HP has successfully ran and continues to run MMIS for several states.

Re:Software?

[eap]

No, EDS is HP's Enterprise Services arm. They deal with proving and installing software produced by HP Software. HP Software is an entirely separate division, and is alone one of the largest software businesses in the world. Think of products like Server Automation, NNM, Client Automation, and Operations Orchestration.

Sure ES sells to governments and the same as any other integrator like Raytheon or CA. HP Software actually produces the products that get work done in all the major companies of the world

Re:Software?

[Lifyre]

I'm actually referring to managing turning 6000 networks (many not email capable), 8000 applications, and 15,000 logistics and readiness systems into two networks, 500 applications, and ~2700 readiness systems in about 2 years. Without loss of function or capability.

Re:Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that's the services business.

the *software* business is the tiny little slice of HP that grew the most last quarter and so that's where our myopic CEO is thinking "great let's focus on this bit" (even though in terms of revenue percentage, it makes less than what PSG lost last quarter. software grew last quarter (finally). Guess how: by the big push from HP for webOS -- backed by actual hardware to run it on.

this is a stupid knee-jerk tactical reaction (couched in "statigic" terms) to a short-term financial problem. it guts HPQ of the last bits of anything that was from Bill and Dave (or from the Compaq / DEC line). Apotheker is stupid to do this and i hate him for it.

Patents

[Billly Gates]

I wonder if patents had anything to do with it?

It sounds like its time to fire the CEO. They paid billions just a few months ago for WebOS from Palm and now have nothing to show for it. Either way that was a very expensive bad investment if you blow billions just to dump it a very short time later. If patents were that bad the CEO should have made sure their employees did a risk analysis and investigate this. I mean this is why you pay the employees right? Idiots

Re:Patents

[Nimey]

Fire the CEO so he can get a $50m golden parachute, right?

Re:Patents

[shoehornjob]

I wonder if patents had anything to do with it?

It sounds like its time to fire the CEO. They paid billions just a few months ago for WebOS from Palm and now have nothing to show for it. Either way that was a very expensive bad investment if you blow billions just to dump it a very short time later. If patents were that bad the CEO should have made sure their employees did a risk analysis and investigate this. I mean this is why you pay the employees right? Idiots

I was wondering if they bought Palm to sweaten the deal when they divest themselves of the computer business. After all HP computers were never all that great IMHO. It would be interesting to see a company like Tiger Direct pick up the business and start selling their own computers. God knows they certainly have the distribution channel to move them.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Tiger did sell PCs back in the 1990s. My friend got a sweet deal for an NT 4.0 workstation back when they were expensive and uber cool for cheap.

Re:Patents

[Billly Gates]

Or he can keep making billion dollar purchases and selling them at a loss.

I hate to reward incompentence here but there wont be a company left before you know it. HP is in big trouble. I guess I shouldn't care since I do not own stock. I am bugged because I hate Dell quality and I do not see any real choices for corporate customers anymore besides Dell. I guess they could go Lenovo but I do not know if they are quality products anymore.

If Windows 8 were not coming out I could see Dell buying WebOS as they would love to get into the smart phone market and are not heavily invested in Andriod yet. Unfortunately, Dell has a history of not pissing off Microsoft nor Intel and probably prefers to sell a Windows 8 PAD instead. the incompentence is just astounding

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

While true, a risk management analysis will only do that. Not tell you if it will succeed, it still had a % chance of failure. Sometimes things just don't work out no matter the planning.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Last guy (Hurd) that bought Palm was fired already. Apotheker is 9 months on the job, hard to place all of the blame on him.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to pay him and fire than keep him and incur more bad decisions. He is is trying to run HP into ground by cutting off PC unit with over 9 billion revenue and over 1 billion per year and replacing it with Autonomy which has less than 1 billion income and he is paying 10 billion for this. He should be sued.

Re:Patents

[tukang]

It might be a coincidence but HP's stock started its decline when Hurd was replaced and hasn't recovered since. I wonder if the board regrets how it handled that situation.

Re:Patents

[eap]

The CEO who bought Palm was fired last year

Re:Patents

[dakameleon]

It sounds like its time to fire the CEO. They paid billions just a few months ago for WebOS from Palm and now have nothing to show for it.

Well... not quite "a few months ago". They paid $1.2bn in April-June 2010; the purchase was complete on July 1; CEO Mark Hurd resigned August 6 2010. August 18 2011, new CEO Leo Apotheker (formerly of SAP) announced they were getting out of the business.

Either way that was a very expensive bad investment if you blow billions just to dump it a very short time later. If patents were that bad the CEO should have made sure their employees did a risk analysis and investigate this. I mean this is why you pay the employees right? Idiots

Maybe the patents are worth more than the price paid for Palm in 2010 - after all, we've since seen a lot more litigation on the basis of these patents, and two multi-billion dollar deals that look to be driven by patents. The asset has appreciated, so it could have ended up being a very smart buy. Guess we'll see in the next few weeks as it plays out.

Itanium

[linatux]

& death of HP-UX?

Re:Itanium

[wsxyz]

Oracle already let the cat out of the bag w.r.t. Itanium.

Re:Itanium

[rubycodez]

as did microsoft and redhat

Re:Itanium

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Exactly. As I mentioned elsewhere, Carly and the Itanic were almost equal partners in destroying the culture at HP. Itanic killed PA-RISC and Alpha (along with MIPS, SPARC and PowerPC) and the engineering talent scattered to the winds. HP was no longer a cutting edge company, engineering-wise, and they've never recovered.

Re:Itanium

[mikael]

That was really the fault of Microsoft and their spin machine - 1994/1995, Microsoft was announcing that "Windows NT was the future, UNIX was legacy". When NT came out, all the application developers were forced to abandon one UNIX platform each in order to support NT (all those compiler, manual and support licenses) cost a bundle. That forced many of the small-niche companies to switch to Windows NT (DEC, HP, SGI) and become "box integrators" like Dell (ie. take a PC motherboard, slap in a graphics board, disk drive, some memory chips, a CPU, and a Microsoft license and flog the whole caboodle for something that made enough profit to keep the shareholders happy).

Alas, poor Compaq

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew it well, Horatio.

(former Houston Compaq employee - 1988 -2000)

I'm OK With This

[rlp]

Just as well, judging by the latest HP laptop I've seen, they weren't very good at it.

Re:I'm OK With This

[darkwing_bmf]

I can't say for the laptops but the HP desktop I have is quite nice. Also the TouchSmart line was rather innovative if underpowered. Now Dell will have no competition in the desktop market and Apple will have no competition in the entertainment pad market. I don't see how this will be good for consumers.

Re:I'm OK With This

[baka_toroi]

Perhaps it's because I'm from a third world country, but do people really buy these kind of computers? I mean, I think every single one of them is a piece of shit. I'd rather build one on my own or have somebody else do it for me if I were to be clueless about computers.

Re:I'm OK With This

[colinnwn]

Desktops? I can't speak for HP, but we buy Dells because you don't really save any money to purchase the same parts and build it yourself, unless you are doing a custom gaming rig. Laptops are pretty impossible to build and have them come out nicer looking and cheaper than what you can purchase prebuilt.

Re:I'm OK With This

[Bobfrankly1]

Just as well, judging by the latest HP laptop I've seen, they weren't very good at it.

As a proud Envy owner, I respectfully submit how wrong (and envious) you are.

Re:I'm OK With This

[Anonymous Coward]

I do have someone else build my computer for me. Usually HP or Dell or Gateway.

Re:I'm OK With This

[tjb]

You build your own small form factor laptops?

Re:I'm OK With This

[baka_toroi]

Cool, and don't you think they are terrible deal? colinnwn (check out the other reply) said they cost the same, so I can understand that. Still, Dell/HP/Gateway's PSUs and motherboards are downright disgusting to me and I can't really get why anyone would buy that.

Re:I'm OK With This

[baka_toroi]

I forgot to mention it (another user pointed it out) but I was only referring to desktops.

Re:I'm OK With This

[zero0ne]

Ditto. I have a work HP Elitebook, and that thing gets tossed around like a hooker in vegas...

Thing still runs like a champ after close to a year. I had a HDD die on me once, but it was a dud from the factory as it died the day I installed TrueCrypt on it.

Re:I'm OK With This

[Anonymous Coward]

See? I can't possibly imagine a PSU or a motherboard that I would find disgusting. My last machine had some godawful driver issues, but now that that's worked out it's a great machine.

I've never been a hardware tinkerer. I used to tinker a lot more with the OS, but I don't have time to do that anymore.

So, it would cost the same in parts to have a friend build my machine for me as it would to just buy one out of the box. I would feel compelled to pay my friend something to build it if I asked, so the custom machine would be considerably more expensive.

Re:I'm OK With This

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought a 3rd HP Pavillion dv7 laptop, after buying 2 HP Minis. I think you are smoking crack. The Mini is one of the best, if not the best, netbook out there. I gave my dad my original dv7 (bought in 2009) and I just bought two new ones (2011). I kept one for myself and gave the other to my step-dad.

So, I have personally purchased 5 HP laptops in the last 2 years, and they are all great.

In fact, I will stick my head on the fanboi chopping block and say that the dv7 is a far better deal than the MBP with 17" LCD. It came with more RAM, a bigger HDD, a better video card, a Blu-Ray/DVDRW, Win7 64bit, and cost less than 50% of the MBP. It's a win win win win win win regardless of your skewed fanboi view.

Erk!

[jd]

Mr. Apotheker, a former software executive, has been developing a new strategy for H-P based on technology services and software.

Remember, HP doesn't just make home computers. HP is a major manufacturer of network hardware, computers for the military, Intel-based servers, printers and other appliances, etc. To talk of "services" and "software" basically means the CEO isn't just looking at spinning-off the PC section but all of the different hardware groups. That's not trivial. Even if the spin-off organizations and units sold to other organizations continue running as they are, it's going to shake things up.

Re:Erk!

[UnknowingFool]

All of that sounds exactly what IBM did. So they see the writing on the wall 5 years after IBM did. However IBM has a headstart just unlike Apple where HP was making tablets for years before Apple albeit they were lackluster Windows tablets.

LOL WUT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... yeah. Right. Because HP is totally known for developing decent software. Are we talking about shitty drivers, shitty firmware, shitty bundled bloatware, or shitty "enterprise" software?

They should just stick to their shitty hardware. I hope this move ruins them. They've been nothing but a pain in my ass for my entire career. Good fucking riddance.

Even worse than that

[jamrock]

That 25,000 sales figure doesn't include customer returns for refunds, which anecdotally have been startlingly high. The TouchPad has been an unmitigated disaster for HP, and apparently Best Buy is extremely unhappy with the situation, demanding that HP take back unsold inventory.

Re:Even worse than that

[justforgetme]

I really don't get it why the touch pad is an unmitigated disaster.

first of: the UI is very, very powerful
second: it is not as locked down a system as android and ios are
third: it is really howmbrew friendly

I mean, ok these are things that might not appeal to the casual content consumer but from all the stuff that's out there it really seems to be the most poweruser/geek friendly device that came out the last couple of years. I really don't get why it is getting such a bashing from the geek world...

On another note. Nobody in their right mind would expect such a niche device to sell well in it's first iteration. Such things need heavy heavy investments, promo campaigns, QA cycles, propaganda and evangelists. You can't really sell such devices without having some big personalities behind them, or ship without a solid amount of quality assurance and marketing.

hp is in the ink business

[ArhcAngel]

hp hasn't been in the PC hardware business for quite some time. When they realized they could adopt the razor model with their printers they dropped their first core business like a hot potato and never looked back. They have never been a serious PC manufacturer despite all the PC's they managed to sell. I knew when they bought Palm WebOS was doomed just like when they bought Compaq.

Re:hp is in the ink business

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what I like about slashdot... people stating opinions as if they are fact. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Re:hp is in the ink business

[ArhcAngel]

I thought what AC liked about /. was that he could troll anonymously...who knew. And as far as backing up my "opinion" take a gander at this ad for their original hp Vectra series giving away a free LaserJet printer with every purchase. It was a shame hp got into the PC business. Until then they were a really good networking and test & measurement company.

Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[jbarr]

Palm provided a hardware and software platform in its PDAs that defined the industry. They were the leaders early on, edging out Apple, Casio, and many others, and they maintained that lead for a very long time. Then they dropped the ball. They stopped innovating, and they failed at multiple attempts to define themselves, all the while other companies came in and took over the market that they had locked in. PalmOS ultimately evolved into WebOS, built up a devoted niche market, and now this.

I am a long-time PalmOS PDA user. I purchased the US Robotics Pilot 1000 the week after it was released, and I've owned many models since then (the Palm Vx being my favorite.) When the iPod Touch came out, I was intrigued, not so much for its capabilities (it actually had far fewer capabilities than PalmOS PDAs) but more because I say Apple rising in popularity due to the iPhone, and the developer and user following was propelling it forward very fast and hard. The iPod Touch 4G blows the doors off any PalmOS PDA I had, and frankly, I haven't looked back.

And yet, I always wonder what would have happened if Palm had taken a step back, re-assessed what it was doing, and charged ahead with innovation.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[jo_ham]

They also made themselves look very foolish in the whole "spoofing Apple's USB vendor ID" business to get the Palm Pre to sync with iTunes instead of doing it the proper, documented way like MarkSpace's Missing Sync - a piece of software that has its roots in Palm's early abandoning of the Mac platform leaving some of their users in the cold.

At that point I was starting to wonder, if someone *seriously* suggested deliberately breaking their USBIF contract terms and spoofing a vendor ID rather than devote some resources to actually writing a sync channel for iTunes, or simply licensing The Missing Sync. It's just not something a company with its head on straight should really be putting across as a valid option.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[Anonymous Coward]

Palm provided a hardware and software platform in its PDAs that defined the industry. They were the leaders early on, edging out Apple, Casio, and many others, and they maintained that lead for a very long time. Then they dropped the ball. They stopped innovating, and they failed at multiple attempts to define themselves, all the while other companies came in and took over the market that they had locked in. [...]
And yet, I always wonder what would have happened if Palm had taken a step back, re-assessed what it was doing, and charged ahead with innovation.

What-ifs are kind of a thing, though. Consider that period of early success for Palm. What if Apple hadn't blown it so badly about what types of Newton devices and price points they were willing to make? PalmOS wasn't even in the same league as NewtonOS, but Apple's strategic direction sucked. So, they got badly beaten by a bunch of ex-Apple employees who combined hardware people actually wanted to carry in pockets with software that wasn't in Newton's class, but was nonetheless Good Enough. What if Apple had stepped back and re-assessed what they were doing, and proceeded to deploy their superior PDA OS effectively?

The problem was, they couldn't. 1990s Apple was too screwed up. Once the rot is deep it's difficult to eliminate without a transformational event. In Apple's case, that was almost going out of business and bringing Jobs back. But the thing about such events is that it's much easier to make a failed comeback attempt than a successful one. Unfortunately it looks like a failed comeback is what's in the cards for Palm.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper way to handle iTunes is: If you own an iOS device, use iTunes, otherwise use something that works.

Personally, I had the choice of Android or WebOS and I chose WebOS. Although I have since been downgraded to a Palm Pixi (thanks to Asurion who I had to beg and plead with to take only a heavy downgrade instead of the "Here's something completely incompatible and is even useless for it's own platform" phone that was given to me as my only option.), I have not regretted selecting WebOS over Android.

The practices that Palm and HP implemented regarding development are the way smartphones should be. No iffy hacks to enable installing unsigned code. All it takes is enabling developer mode as described in the documentation (provided for free). Everything on the phone is written in JavaScript, including all of the built-in applications (with the exception of the graphics-intensive apps written using the PDK). Everything is modifiable. The phone runs Linux on the back end, and I even have terminal access directly on the phone.

If I had the need for a tablet, I would get a TouchPad. Everything else is inferior.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[vakuona]

Terminal access on phone. facepalm! /. geeks should never run companies.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[soupforare]

The iPod Touch 4G blows the doors off any PalmOS PDA I had, and frankly, I haven't looked back.

I've been looking for PIMs as good as I had a decade+ ago on my III, on both android and iOS, and haven't found any. Let alone the desktop software integration. I stuck with a Treo because of that up until very recently... That's one place I think we've really lost sight on these days.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[tobiah]

Likewise. I blame the business model, which rewards execs more for selling and splitting the business repeatedly than for slogging out a good product. They announced the palm pre 3 in January and I've been waiting to buy it, but it never showed up. I'm done with webOS and HP now, and I'm off to get an iphone.

Re:Just imagine if Palm hadn't dropped the ball.

[TheRaven64]

Why? Terminal access on the phone is incredibly useful for debugging. Having terminal access doesn't mean requiring the terminal to do things. OS X has a nice terminal, but 99% of users never even know it's there. That doesn't mean that including it was a bad idea.

Software business?

[Above]

HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?

Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know.

Re:Software business?

[snookiex]

What about OpenView?

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

By software, they probably mean consulting. As in, you'll be paying them forever to maintain your stuff. The US Navy pays them a ton of money for that:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/hp-holds-navy-network-hostage/

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't name one. Well, unless you include... actually... can't name that program either. It is some hp printer utility though. What amazes me is these companies have such a hard time making money on the PC. We sell computers and make money on the low-end ones most of all. This is kind of humorous given that most of the low end systems have such a low profit margin. Then we have low cost high margin accessories. We have some other service products and new software/service products coming out too.

Re:Software business?

[synapse7]

I'm using HP Web Jetadmin right now to program HP network printers. While it does work nicely to program their printers is it necessary for it to use 700MB of ram, talk about bloatware.

Re:Software business?

[geoffrobinson]

They just bought Vertica, which is a pretty great columnar database.

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?

Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know

Why should they care about what a random computer user might know? http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software/enterprise-software.html#tab=2

Re:Software business?

[Bobfrankly1]

HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?

Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know.

How does what a random computer user might know equal a "software business"?

Re:Software business?

[OldeTimeGeek]

You mean bloatware in network management? HP used to virtually own this space when SunNet Manager disappeared, but there are now many alternatives that are cheaper and a hell of a lot easier to manage. My company used to use it but has mostly dropped it because just takes too many people to set up and keep up to date.

Re:Software business?

[HarrySquatter]

So a page full of buzzwords and flashy pictures. Riiiight.

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

None, because their software focus has been enterprise and not consumer (I am assuming by "random" computer user, you mean home computer user). Here is a list:

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software/enterprise-software.html#tab=3

Re:Software business?

[afabbro]

HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?

Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know.

None. But lots that a business software buyer would know.

Name 5 software titles that Oracle and/or IBM sells that you know. They're the #1 and #2 software companies in the world.

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously, you have no idea what is an enterprise service business is. all you know is pc.

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are loads of software products, none of them are consumer products.
Just check out the the insight family. /Anon HP subcontractor

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're the worlds largest software contracting company. Lots of money to be made in those hills ...

Re:Software business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Random computer user, likely not. But (and this may be somewhat dated): They make Nonstop equipment (and the OS/software infrastructure on it) that runs FAA flight centers, ATM networks, phone switching centers, call centers, EFT networks, and telemarketing centers. At one point they supplied the bulk of the AOL web infrastructure (email, web server, ...). Then we get to network management (Openview), network hardware (switches), and printers and printer software (firmware). So toys for the consumer, maybe not, but toys for the big boys: yes.

So if you use an ATM, send money via wire transfer, fly in a plane, make a call to a call/support center, deal with a LARGE telemarketer, have an AOL account (even just mail), use a major network monitored by Openview, or similar; then you MAY be using HP software of some sort.

The Sooner The Better

[MrOctogon]

Oh No! I won't be able to get horribly fragile laptops with absolute crap for support anymore. I have an HP laptop that I bought just over two years ago. It has been mailed back to them for service five times before the warranty expired. Three of those times, they entirely failed to fix the problem, cracked the screen, or didn't return the battery. Every time I have to call them up it is a painful experience talking to India. Contrast with my experience with apple: when I had a bad power supply on a two year old laptop, the guy at the apple store got a new one from a wrapped box and swapped it over the counter with absolutely no questions asked. There's a reason apple is running HP out of the harware market. They make better hardware, and they are actually pleasant to deal with when something does go wrong.

Computer Business?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP? Leave the PSG (laptops and desktops) business? I'll believe that when I see it.

Exiting the PC Business?

[Sponge Bath]

FTA: "...exploring a spinoff of its PC business"

That's entirely different. Summary blows.

Re:Exiting the PC Business?

[tverbeek]

What will they call the PC-hardware spin-off? I vote for "Compaq".

"Digital" could work too, though there are a lot of consumers who wouldn't get that it's a name with history behind it, and think that "Digital Computer" is just a redundant way of saying "digital computer" but with uppercase letters.

Re:Exiting the PC Business?

[srg33]

Looking for "Digital Equipment Corporation"?

Re:Exiting the PC Business?

[Dogtanian]

"Digital" could work too, though there are a lot of consumers who wouldn't get that it's a name with history behind it, and think that "Digital Computer" is just a redundant way of saying "digital computer" but with uppercase letters.

Except that "Digital"'s old logo was all lower-case anyway!

Re:Exiting the PC Business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Horrible summary. Even the link says "exiting" and goes to the physorg site and then the physorg site says basically expanding into. What EDITOR approved that summary?! This is total FUD!!!

Re:Exiting the PC Business?

[dudpixel]

From the summary it sounds like they're taking their toys and going home.

Re:Exiting the PC Business?

[unixisc]

Go w/ Compaq only - much better known. DEC only makes sense if they're planning to bring back the VAX, the Alpha and some of the other computers that DEC made, but no one else did. Also, would HP be willing to let go of those patents w/ them?

Why?

[pavon]

There are already several companies selling Android tablets. What would HP have to bring to the table, that they don't? At least with WebOS they had an opportunity to do something different and better. My take is that they either should have committed more to WebOS or not bothered with "smartphone" tablet at all.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already several companies selling Android tablets.

That's why. WebOS would be what? The fourth biggest tablet OS, at best. What's the market share of the fourth biggest desktop OS? Android is certainly in the top three and has a good chance of nabbing the number one spot. You're better off being the fourth biggest manufacturer of tablets for the top tablet OS than the top manufacturer of tablets for the fourth biggest OS.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a +2 comment?

Re:Why?

[justforgetme]

... committed more to WebOS ...

Is it just me or is that commitment thing really really yesterday? I mean, first nokia pissing themselves and running towards Redmond's $ and thenHP (who were already some billions into webOS) giving up....

WERE ARE YOUR BALLS SW PEOPLE??????

it's not even like meego and webOS don't have new ideas to bring to the table. they are distinct OSes, not just android ripoffs.

what about printers?

[Joe_Dragon]

Will the Spinoff cover them?

Re:what about printers?

[tverbeek]

They should spin off the printer hardware business, and just be a printer ink business: it's where the money is.

Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[jmcbain]

This move by HP reminds me exactly of IBM's move to sell of their consumer computing line to Lenovo back in 2005. At the time the CEO made the prescient observation that the consumer hardware business is a low-margin, low-profit business, and indeed for IBM, they've made much more money operating as a software and services outfit (aside from their mainframe line and supercomputing hardware).

So this leaves Apple and Dell as the only large computer-hardware companies in the USA.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[jsepeta]

well there's always gateway. yuk. i'm extremely disappointed in this news. all 10 pc's in my house are HP's, as are 3 laptops.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[aztracker1]

Honestly, I've been fairly content with Lenovo for higher end, and Acer or Asus for low-end. The last several tiems I bought HP, they cost more than the equivalent Acer or Asus and the build quality was no better.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[tverbeek]

Well, it depends a bit on what entity ends up owning the PC division: whether it's sold to a foreign corporation or not. But really, does it make a difference where the corporate offices of the company are? Yes, it's nice that Apple has headquarters in Cupertino, Dell is in Round Rock, and HP is in Palo Alto, and that they provide good jobs and pay some taxes there, but they're all selling products that are made overseas.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[babywhiz]

Yea, I'm kinda not happy. 214 HP work stations. Now what?

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh...no. Consumer product is a rather large margin business. Just ask Apple, who had a nearly 25% profit margin on $28bil in last qtr revenue. That, my friend is not low margin. Consumers are just quite demanding and want constant improvement. HPs consumer line stuff has been old and boring for years. They failed to give the consumer what they wanted. So did IBM. When Lenovo took over their consumer-line stuff, they innovated a great deal. IBM would never have offered the kind of products Lenovo has been introducing.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM still has their line of Power servers, which helped push Sun to the brink:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/

I assume HP will hold onto it's line of Itanium HP-UX servers and storage solutions, but Itanium is, shall we say, holding a bit of a niche market share.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[chack]

My company's HP ProBooks were manufactured by Wistron (spin off of Acer), exactly like all ThinkPads used here.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[jmcbain]

Uh, no. Apple is the ONLY U.S. consumer computer company to make a significant profit. The Windows PC business is dominated by high-volume, low-margin commodity products. That is exactly why IBM and now HP bailed out.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[Abreu]

That's because Apple has somehow brainwashed people into overpaying for perfectly normal hardware. I doubt HP could pull it off.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[vakuona]

No. Apple own the whole stack. They don't give up their profits to Microsoft. The rest of the PC industry is basically a delivery system for Microsoft software (and profits). Microsoft does the low risk bit, and the rest of the industry risk everything to try and make a bit of money, which Microsoft siphons off courtesy the Windows and Office license fees. If the PC manufacturers could negotiate better, they would sell computers at cost of building them + the license fee, for which they would demand an equal share (or substantial) of Microsoft's Windows license fee as their profit.

Re:Just like when IBM sold off their consumer line

[TheRaven64]

At the time the CEO made the prescient observation that the consumer hardware business is a low-margin, low-profit business, and indeed for IBM, they've made much more money operating as a software and services outfit

Meanwhile Lenovo's profits from the PC division are up 51% and have been increasing for 7 consecutive quarters, during a recession. Great business decision there, IBM...

Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[xtracto]

HP has been one of the worst PC manufacturers in the last 10 years (if not more). I have had a very low view of their PCs since the time they started selling thsose small towers with everything cramped in (about 10 years ago).

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[Just Brew It!]

Their workstation-class machines have been (and still are) fairly reasonable as off-the-rack systems go. Their servers are good too (though overpriced).

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's just one data point among many, but I recently discovered that HP workstations (admittedly only some refurbished models), gave a better bang for the buck than a build-your own barebones kit. All I needed to do was beef up the power supply and drop in a GPU. Much less work than spec-ing and building the whole thing myself, and no rebates on the PC parts to deal with.

The result was by no means a high-end gaming rig, but it's enough for me.

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

HP has been one of the worst PC manufacturers [squaretrade.com] in the last 10 years (if not more). I have had a very low view of their PCs since the time they started selling thsose small towers with everything cramped in (about 10 years ago).

I could link to some random bullshit bitchsite that supports my bias... or I could just say that at least HP beats the shit out of Dell for enterprise gear. Dell "enterprise" notebooks are just a joke, and the amount of bad capacitors that go into their workstations often makes them useless for... you know... doing work.

I also can't sing high enough praise for their Proliant servers. I highly recommend them for anyone putting FreeBSD on production machines :)

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[afidel]

Was this business class or consumer class systems? HP's business class systems aren't quite as nice as the Lenovo (nee IBM) stuff but we haven't seen any huge rash of failures either and we're paying quite a bit less for equivalent systems.

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

HP has subbed out the manufacturing of "their" hardware for years. Put a sticker on a foxconn box and sell. Compaq was lean and mean, and actually built their products in America. Carly destroyed that when she went on her ego trip. Have a lot of friends from the DEC and Compaq days who I know will be affected, but this is hardly surprising considering the ineptitude of their corporate management.

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[Billly Gates]

I can tell you from experience Toshiba's which are listed as the top SUCK. They are always in a shop I used to work at as they have problems. My exwife and my own had issues. I have an Asus desktop currently and its ok. I only had it for a year, but my exgf bought an Asus laptop and the cheap plastic is coming off it ... it was tied with Toshiba for number 1.

Apple I assumed was much more reliable? Acer I can see as well as crap. I see them BSOD in the store all the time hehe

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[unixisc]

I always had a low opinion of Compaq, but not HP. Of course, once HP acquired Compaq, it was hard to tell the difference. If HP does spin off its PC unit, do it under the Compaq brand name, and retain printers, servers & services. That means the Integrity servers, as well as Proliant and other servers will stay w/ them.

Re:Out of the PC market? Good Riddance!

[Methuseus]

Squaretrade is a well known consumer extended warranty company, and as far as I know has no business support arm. And the GP's post makes it sound like he worked somewhere similar to Geek Squad, as he mentions number sold vs. number repaired.

"If I could turn back tiiime"

[symbolset]

Coulda woulda shoulda. Too late now.

Agilent

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.

No, that was Agilent, the test and measurement company.

We're talking about HP, the Printer/Business Services/Bottom-barrel PC company. Totally different.

Re:Agilent

[mallyn]

Thanks:

I was going to suggest the same thing, but I forgot the Agilent name

I am curious, when HP and Agilent split, did all of the real engineer end up migrating to Agilent?

Re:Agilent

[Grishnakh]

The test and measurement company also made the best printers in the industry for quite some time.

HP should sell their printer division to Agilent, along with their name, and then shut down.

Re:Agilent

[shugah]

Didn't they pretty much spin off Agilent so they could acquire Compaq - to be stronger in the PC hardware sector?

Re:Agilent

[Dogtanian]

This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.

No, that was Agilent, the test and measurement company. We're talking about HP, the Printer/Business Services/Bottom-barrel PC company. Totally different.

Shows you the importance of a name on perception. Often major companies split or spin-off major parts of themselves to the extent that one could question whether the current user of the name is meaningfully the "same" company as the original.

It occurs to me that it may be useful to consider the lineage of the various business entities formed from mergers, takeovers, spinoffs and splits *without* attaching weight to their names. Then- considering lineage, size and business interests- askine oneself whether the current holder of the "big name" is any more clearly the "true" continuation of the original company than any of the others.

In the case of Agilent, it's still (apparently) far smaller than HP which remains the obvious parent, but it could also be argued that it represents the roots of HP.

Motorola is the obvious example that sprung to mind though. It's spun-off or split major parts of itself several times and at the start of this year split into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobile, the latter being the business that Google recently bought. But this is after already having spun/split-off its semiconductor divisions in 1999 and 2004, as well as its original radio business (on which it founded its reputation) having been sold off in the 1970s.

Is Motorola "Solutions" (*) still the same Motorola that created the old products people get nostalgic about? That's questionable.

(*) Absolutely meaningless sound-good business expression that's so banally all-pervasive that it doesn't even qualify as a "buzzword" any more.

Re:Agilent

[Bassman59]

Thanks:

I was going to suggest the same thing, but I forgot the Agilent name

I am curious, when HP and Agilent split, did all of the real engineer end up migrating to Agilent?

All of the real engineering was in the Test and Measurement group, which was what became Agilent. The industrial-strength computing business (the big minis and such) stayed with HP, as did the printer business, but all of the innovative stuff that made HP great were part of the T+M business.

Re:Agilent

[Bassman59]

Along those lines, you have the original AT+T, which included the famed Bell Labs, being split up, and I think that Alcatel ended up with Bell Labs, which was spun out again into Avago (or was that the old HP optoelectronics business?). And one of the Baby Bells that came out of the AT+T split morphed into Cingular, which bought whatever was being called AT+T at the time and then it renamed itself AT+T. It's all perception ....

Re:Agilent

[petermgreen]

Avago (or was that the old HP optoelectronics business?)

Avago was spun off from Agilent who in turn were spun off from HP.

It's not uncommon to see a part listed on the supplier as being from avago with a datasheet that is titled agilent and a H at the start of the part number (which I presume originally stood for HP)

Something missing

[gmuslera]

Something is between lines. HP recently bought Palm for a lot of cash, announced new webos&devices and now they are ditching those devices. So why they were so confident on buying palm in the 1st place? Im afraid that the patent fight around mobile/portable devices will scale up a lot in the next few months.

Re:Something missing

[synapse7]

I liked webOS, HP really gave up on it quick.

Re:Something missing

[Tridus]

I'm not sure what's missing. HP tried to get into the tablet business by buying Palm. The Touchpad bombed in spectacular fashion and will require them to take a huge loss.

Now they've decided they can't compete in that business. They probably should have figured that out earlier, but better late then never I suppose.

Re:Something missing

[blahbooboo]

Different CEO bought Palm. That's what's going on...this one was stuck with Palm and didn't want it...

Re:Something missing

[cmiller173]

They also changed CEO after buying Palm. New CEO (Léo Apotheker) came from SAP. SAP is an enterprise software company. Léo Apotheker is remaking HP into a company he knows how to run. Somewhere else (hacker news maybe, or precentral) someone made the analogy of a new coach on a sports team recruiting new players that play to his style rather than working with the players he inherited (aka it's a rebuilding year).

Re:Something missing

[cmiller173]

Palm didn't even have a tablet design when HP bought them. Palm had released the original Pre, had the plans for the Pre2 but needed the cash infusion from HP to actually get it produced.

Re:Something missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be, but the patent fight will scale up regardless.

However the automotive market is up-and-coming, and there is more potential for a proprietary platform. (You just have to convice a major car maker to go with your OS, and probably the car maker will want to control the app market for it.) Personally I think android will kick ass when it lands on the dash. I'd much rather be able to install my own apps than have to rely on Toyota's largess with their Entune platform, e.g..

[Hey lazyweb of grammar-nazis: do I need another period to end the sentence after "e.g."? "e.g.." looks wierd.]

Low margins

[symbolset]

You have to work really hard for that PC dollar. In desktop PCs Microsoft makes several times the profit dollars per unit than HP or Lenovo does. Lenovo's crowing about "huge" $100M profits on $5B sales right now- about 2 percent. That's a lot of work and risk for $100M profit to be a good thing. You could blow $100M just by, say, building an initial run of half a million tablets that don't sell.

Servers?

[joelleo]

I've worked in managed hosting for more than a decade and HP servers have proven themselves over and over again. I see no mention of HP divesting themselves of their servers in TFA - anyone have any insights beyond the "well, its not in the article so its not on the table"?

Re:Servers?

[geoffrobinson]

I don't think they would have bought Vertica in March if they were going to get rid of their server line of business.

Re:Servers?

[symbolset]

From the audio of the conference call it's not on the table at all. Reasonably good margins in servers, links to great margin services revenue and vertically integrated "converged" systems.

Carly!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the circle of Carly's destruction is complete.

History of HP

[tibit]

So, HP was an instrument company, started with an ingenious application of a light bulb no less. Then they became a computer company sort of by attrition, since they needed machines to control their instruments -- IIRC. Then servers came sort of naturally when they got to dabble with UNIX. Then the core instrument business got spun off as Agilent, pretty much tarring the name of Hewlett and Packard IMHO. Then the PC business gets spun off too. So what remains is servers? What the heck software is HP shipping that hasn't to do with their own hardware? It's becoming more and more of a joke to keep the same name. Their business got nothing to do with Hewlett nor Packard. They're turning in their graves. </rant>

Re:History of HP

[labnet]

Well said tibit.
In my mind, HP = High Quailty Test Equipment.
Every engineer who has been around for a while, will have some piece of test gear with HP on it.

Re:History of HP

[Compuser]

I just hope when HP goes bust, Agilent buy their name. To me, they are HP but I refuse to get worked up over branding.

Re:History of HP

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Maybe they are hoping that Oracle buys them. Worked for Sun. ;)

Re:History of HP

[CannonballHead]

They're turning in their graves.

They're dead? :P ;)

Re:History of HP

[Warren416]

Wow. Love the linear pdf. Including the doodle on the last page! W

Re:History of HP

[Billly Gates]

Dont give them any ideas!

  Many HP shops would be horrified if Oracle blackmailed them and insisted on millions of dollars if they want their 1,000 HP desktops supported, by a contract. Then the contract would force them to use Oracle Database for more money and would be stuck with Java and so on ...

Oracle has been known to use tactics like this to create lockin

Re:History of HP

[Guy Harris]

So what remains is servers?

From what they've mentioned in their press releases and what's in their products and services page, what hardware remains is servers and storage, printers/scanners/all-in-ones and supplies for them, networking devices, and some other miscellanea (calculators, monitors, etc.).

What the heck software is HP shipping that hasn't to do with their own hardware?

I'm not sure - the stuff I've found on their software site doesn't do a great job of saying what platforms the software runs on, although some of the stuff for mail archiving on Microsoft Exchange seems to at least hint that it runs on Windows servers (some of which might be theirs, at least unless and until they spin off that group, but not all of which are necessarily theirs).

It's becoming more and more of a joke to keep the same name. Their business got nothing to do with Hewlett nor Packard.

William Hewlett was CEO until 1979, and David Packard was chairman of the board until 1993 (except for a couple of years when he was a deputy secretary of defense). That period includes a bunch of the "business computer" stuff (HP 3000, UNIX boxes) which HP haven't spoken of divesting. Dumping the PC business is hardly the action that kicks H&P to the curb; dumping the instrument business maybe, but not the PC business.

Re:History of HP

[Bing Tsher E]

In my mind General Radio (GenRad) and Tektronix equal high quality test equipment. And Fluke used to be in that bracket. HP has good gear in certain segments of the market (frequency generators, spectrum analyzers, etc.) but their Oscilloscopes have been total junk going back even to the analog days.

When techs would compete to see who got which scope in the lab, someone had to end up with the HP scope. Nobody really wanted it.

Re:History of HP

[Chris Mattern]

Um, yeah. Bill Hewlett died in 2001. David Packard died in 1996. Given that they were born in 1912/1913, it's not like they went before their time.

Re:History of HP

[vegiVamp]

> What the heck software is HP shipping that hasn't to do with their own hardware?

Servicedesk, to name but one.

Re:History of HP

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a name, and that name will be used to sell something I'm sure. Look at Nokia. Its a telecommunications company now, but that is a long ways away from what they started out as. Or look at Motorola. The official Motorola doesn't do anything like what the company did when it first started. In fact, the stuff they are most well known for now days was just sold off to Google.

Re:History of HP

[tibit]

Tektronix these days is nothing special, especially after it got acquired by Danaher. HP's scopes are better these days, especially their mid-range stuff.

Re:History of HP

[Bing Tsher E]

GenRad is still pretty good, though I am not that big an enthusiast for Digibridges. Any instrument that goes 'dead' when a calibration battery dies is a disappointment to me. My old General Radio LCR Bridges have stayed accurate and usable for decades without needing any special attention.

Re:History of HP

[tibit]

Oh, the joy of dealing with dying old Dallas Semi battery-backed stuff. I just don't get it. Intel 2816 was available just fine in the early 80s. Xicor and OKI quickly picked it up and were second sources. Why the **** didn't the HP and other folk use it? It's 2 kilobytes and needs only 5V to operate. Writing one byte takes 10ms, but it's not the end of the world: it takes 20 seconds to fill the entire device. And erasure is done at a byte level, so you can efficiently modify single bytes.

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking at my calendar, nope it's not April 1st. WTF? Is this for real?

1. Talk about a lack of staying power (will). What, did you think you'd come anywhere close to challenging the iPad overnight? It will take years. Where's your dedication HP?

2. Exiting the PC hardware business? Are you insane? HP's software sucks. Believe me, you better stick to building PC hardware, especially servers. We pretty much buy only HP hardware where I work (big company). We're not alone. You really want to throw that all away? You'd be better off bringing Carly back.

Ummm...

[celticryan]

They were just awarded a huge NASA contract to provide HARDWARE and desktop support (the old Lockheed ODIN contract)... Seems odd. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110428a.html
Since they are replacing all the Dells at NASA with HP (at HP's request when they started the contract) - why would they now be looking to get out of hardware?

Re:Ummm...

[rubycodez]

low profits, money is finally driving HPs thinking. that NSA and similar contracts won't matter, they'll just go with the spin-off

Re:Ummm...

[Billly Gates]

Yeah, but who would buy such HP servers and contracts when they can go all Dell and get everything from a unified vendor! I can get a Dell contract with services and a discount with Dell servers and desktops sold together.

IBM has accounting services, programing, CIO outsourcing, consultations, middleware products, etc. What does HP have? Some guy (probably a kid out of college) who can help integrate some server/client setup? Please. IBM had these things from the begining and has a huge platform. Worse HP looses money from each printer but makes it up in ink. Now how else can you get a great free printer with that HP purchase? Ooops ...

This guy is a raider and I give it maybe 5 years max before it goes out of business. I would like to say 2 years more likely. The only salvage I can think of is they become a small company specialising in ink with maybe 500 employees. By the patents and copyrights on their ink refill chips will expire and then what? GONE

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's reactionary thinking, a lack of planning and just spinning on a dime as a result.

Re:Ummm...

[eap]

Are they replacing desktops or servers in this case? HP is not getting out of the server business, just consumer desktops and mobile devices.

FYI, every major computer company confiscates and destroys any legacy competitor machines when taking over a contract. This is to prevent the machines living on and making money in support and repairs for the competitor.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps NASA/ODIN is taking advantage of a "fire sale" and going with the lowest bidder,
even though HP PCs may not be around much longer.

Re:Ummm...

[rubycodez]

watch HP go on buying rampage for the things you mentioned (they've actually been doing that for years, all kinds of disparate expensive software and consulting solutions offered, what a steaming pile). I predict good products will be destroyed and many good people thrown out on the street

Re:Ummm...

[Howitzer86]

If I recall from the webcast, they said it's the consumer market they want to get out of. They will probably continue to sell z800 workstations, servers, and the like. At least I hope so.

Re:Ummm...

[celticryan]

Servers are typically done outside the ODIN contract, so this is mainly for desktops and laptops. The question, and the one I see all of the top brass having issue with, is what will happen with their treasured iPhones when the contract switches over?

Re:Ummm...

[celticryan]

I am sure they went with the lowest bidder since federal requires that. But this was awarded before they announced their exit from the desktop market.

Exiting tablet/phone space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where in the physorg.com link does it say they're going to stop making phones and tablets? It does say they are expanding where webOS can play (which has been talked about for a while), but I didn't see anything about stopping production on TouchPads & whatever they call their phones now. What am I missing?

Re:Exiting tablet/phone space?

[Guy Harris]

Where in the physorg.com link does it say they're going to stop making phones and tablets? It does say they are expanding where webOS can play (which has been talked about for a while), but I didn't see anything about stopping production on TouchPads & whatever they call their phones now. What am I missing?

You're missing the HP press release, which says

HP will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. The devices have not met internal milestones and financial targets. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

Good bye.

[drolli]

I just see the last software designed by palm sinking. All which i have now as a memory is the port of graffiti as an input method for android.

I have a great name for the spin-off

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Compaq

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[ZPWeeks]

You've been talking to Michael Dell, haven't you?

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Actually, that is a great idea. Consumers know Compaq.

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if they rename the server division Digital Equipment Corporation.

No, really. th

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Anonymous Coward]

Its funnier because that is what the Pr people said was the plan when they first bought Compaq! They claimed HP would stick to what it was good at (printers) and Compaq would focus on its strength of laptops in the consumer market. Then about a year later the whole plan had changed, maybe something internal but they just seemed to almost ditch the Compaq brand completely.

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Dogtanian]

Compaq

Yeah, I'd have suggested that they call the spin-off "HP", but I think Agilent probably already have a better claim on that name. :-)

The remainder of the current HP could then give themselves a more descriptive name- it's a toss-up between "Crappy Bloatware Inc." and "Bloated Crapware Inc".

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Anonymous Coward]

How about MoreCompaqt...

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the suggestion, Michael Dell.

https://twitter.com/#!/MichaelDell/status/104266609316732928

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Anonymous Coward]

DEC

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Chris Mattern]

How about Digital?

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[AndrewStephens]

Actually, that is a terrible idea. Consumers know Compaq.

Re:I have a great name for the spin-off

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like crappers know toilet paper. Compaq? Garbage on a stick. If you have compaq servers and british cars, sell the servers.

No more pcs??

[roc97007]

> they also announced they are considering exiting the PC hardware business entirely in order to focus on their software business.

Could it be... could this mean... that I will never again have to fix a customer's Pavilion?

Happy days are here again!

The skes above are clear again!

Let's sing a song of cheer again!

Happy days are here agaaaaaainnnnnnnn

But wait... doesn't that mean they'll sell existing stock at heavily discounted prices? Now I'm depressed again...

Re:No more pcs??

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno; as annoying as it is to have so many HP products come in for repair, the money isn't bad :-(

Oh Goody...

[sxedog]

Because their software is soooo good to begin with...

Break out the champagne!

/sarcasm

You wanna check how many iOS tablets were sold

[Brannon]

during that same period of time?

Re:You wanna check how many iOS tablets were sold

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're claiming that sales are directly proportional to the quality of the OS?

Windows.

Re:You wanna check how many iOS tablets were sold

[Coren22]

Just because the average consumer sees nothing past "ooo shiney" does not mean that it is a good tablet. If you want a useful tablet, you do not buy iOS.

Also sad about WebOS

[SuperKendall]

At one point in the early days I was hopeful it would actually overtake Android. It was a great OS with some fantastic ideas, and it doesn't deserve the short run it had...

Perhaps Apple should buy the WebOS division for the patents... :-)

Re:Also sad about WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly curious -- what made it better than Android? I've never used it much myself and the wikipedia page doesn't make it obvious what UI or OS features differentiated WebOS from any other platform. I can easily imagine a better more coherent "feel" to mobile UI than Android has (a current advantage of iOS IMHO, lack of customization aside).

Re:Also sad about WebOS

[ryanov]

Download the SDK (for free). It runs a copy of webOS on Virtualbox. It's the best UI out of any smartphone. RIP.

Re:Also sad about WebOS

[RoccamOccam]

Testing of your TouchPad app can often be done on your desktop by just dropping the top-level file onto an instance of Chrome (with a couple of options set). It sure made development easy.

Great Strategy! After all, it worked for GeoWorks

[teambpsi]

Oh wait, it didn't.

Good fucking riddance.

[Anonymous Coward]

What was once a bastion of the computer industry has devolved into nothing more than an also-ran with it's finger so far from the pulse of the industry the industry has had to repeatedly inform HP they're not into fisting and that their colon is much better without HP lodged in there.

The HP of yore has been sorely missed for years now. The current incarnation of the company can go to hell and squat a coal.

Compaq

[djp928]

They could call the new company... Compaq!

Ding Dong

[teaserX]

...the Wicked Witch is dead.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

How good / hackable is the hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a good opportunity to aquire a tablet at fire-sale prices.

How hackable is this as a Linux device? Can custom loads go on it? Are there any decent tablet-oriented Linux distros?

Tablet + wifi keyboard becomes a tenable mobile platform (on-screen still sucks).

"I blame Carly"

[DesScorp]

I personally blame Carly Fiorina for the travails of a once-proud company.

Good Lord, why?

I see people bitch about Fiorina all the time here, and most of it is unwarranted. She was pretty gruff with her underlings, and obviously wasn't much fun to work for (I guy I know that worked with HP at the time told me that there were literally celebrations in the halls when "Aunt Carly" resigned).

But give credit where credit is due. Much of the success Mark Hurd enjoyed while at HP was a direct result of decisions Fiorina made and didn't stick around long enough to take credit for, i.e. the purchase of Compaq. Everybody, including myself hated it when she did it, but after she was gone, suddenly, what a wise decision it was that HP made. Fiorina, who was the driving force behind the idea, gets no credit for her own brainchild. People just pretend it happend sponteneously or something, and that the merged companies just happened to fall in Mark Hurd's lap.

No, she's not pleasant to work for. Neither was Patton. But in hindsight, looking at the results, she got things done, at AT&T, Lucent, Agilent, and yes, HP. HP made money under Fiorina, and Mark Hurd made even more money, and he basically just carried out her business plan (leverage the larger merged PC business, get heavily into the services sector).

There were valid criticisms of the woman, some of them major... hell, I wouldn't want to work for her... but a lot of people spout crap about her when they really have no idea what they're talking about. Blame her for HP's current mess? She's been gone for years and left the company in good shape. How in the hell is HP's current woes her fault? "I blame Carly" has turned into a silly meme, joing the company of Microsoft conspiracy theories and "BSD is dead".

Re:"I blame Carly"

[wolfemi1]

Who blames Carly because she was rude? From all accounts I've heard, the Compaq merger was a huge mistake, as was the spin-off of Agilent and the iPod cross-licensing with Apple. You think that the party thrown when she left was just because she was rude? Why did HP's market cap raise by $8 BILLION when she left? Surely market traders on Wall street wouldn't care whether she was gruff with her employees.

Re:"I blame Carly"

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, my I must disagree. Carly started a set of corporate disasters that are still dragging down HP, ranging from their purchase of Compaq (which was an amazing mismatch with HP's former reputation for quality hardware in many fields, and the loss of manufacturing quality by preserving any products or personnal from Compaq is still hurting HP).

There is a good article at http://www.businesspundit.com/10-reasons-people-hate-carly-fiorina/. It points out, correctly, that HP made money _despite_ Carly's misguided decisions, not because of them: HP's printer business continued to be quite profitable for reasons that were in place before Carly's reign.

Re:"I blame Carly"

[Asic Eng]

Who blames Carly because she was rude?

Well I would. Nobody wants to work in a shitty environment. The most qualified and knowledgeable employees will have better options, so they are more likely to leave. A manager who is creating a shitty work environment drains their company of the best people and makes it harder to hire new talent.

Obviously nobody is perfect, and a manager who fails in one area might make up for that in others, but being considered rude by your employees is not a good thing for the bottom line.

Re:"I blame Carly"

[Anonymous Coward]

and the loss of manufacturing quality by preserving any products or personnal from Compaq is still hurting HP).

Compaq at the time was still home to a _lot_ of EXTREMELY good people from the sellout of Digital Equipment Corp by its board and GQ Bob Palmer. Whatever crap personnel HP might have added to its roster it also got a healthy dose of the best in the business. Then it squandered them...

They have software?

[Zappy]

They have software? Well, apart from webos and driver software for their hardware?

Re:They have software?

[Bing Tsher E]

Their driver software, particularly the 'bundle' that comes under the guise of being a 'printer driver' is more immense and bloated than many full operating systems.

It used to be that an HP printer sat out on the other end of a wire and you just shot Postscript at it. But those days are long gone.

Re:They have software?

[zyzko]

Tons of it. As a single consumer you don't see it but as enterprise customer you very much do. They are nowadays as much if more an integrator and datacenter builder as a printer / camera manufacturer. They are taking the road of IBM, which is not necessarily a bad move. The PC, mobile phone and tablet business is a cutthroat-competition now and the only one who really shines is Apple. In business sense it is a good move to choose your battles to those which you can win and bring good profits. From general point of view losing webOS (if this really means it) and HP desktop/laptop hardware is a loss - competition keeps others innovating.

From the trenches

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear CxOs,

Stop killing this company, I actually like working there.

Sincerely,
A disappointed employee.

just amazing

[frovingslosh]

These morons bought Compaq a few years ago for more money than the Chinese paid for the IBM PC business. Now they want to shut it down and focus on their software business. Of course, there is no real software business, but lets just ignore that. Bummer, since Toshiba laptops are crap and I don't know where I'm going to be able to buy my next PC laptop. No, I don't want to buy it from the Chinese and I don't want one with the damn post sticking up in the middle of the keyboard.

Re:just amazing

[Andreas Mayer]

Bummer, since Toshiba laptops are crap and I don't know where I'm going to be able to buy my next PC laptop. No, I don't want to buy it from the Chinese and I don't want one with the damn post sticking up in the middle of the keyboard.

You could buy a Macbook. I was told they work nicely as Windows or Linux boxes.

WebOS only likely ROI now is patents.

[guidryp]

WebOS is too tainted to rise again after this. It will likely only making a any return on investment by licensing the patents to Google.

Re:WebOS only likely ROI now is patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they do not own the patents. Check the USPTO for the assignee, and I think you will be surprised.

NO!!!!1

[Anonymous Coward]

While there home desktop market might not be the best . Their business pc's are doing pretty well. Their z series workstations are the pc equivalent to the mac pro.

We also have been using hp business pc's because dells quality got soo bad that we had to switch to hp. IF hp gives up on the pc market there is pretty much nobody left.

Re:NO!!!!1

[tekiegreg]

There are still plenty of smaller PC Makers out there, Falcon Northwest comes to mind immediately. But in the big name PC World, pickings will get rather slim...

My first impulse...

[geminidomino]

My first impulse is to say "good riddance." Using only my circle-of-free-tech-support-clients (ie, friends, family and a few women that... yeah, anyway...), in the past 4 or 5 years, they've been even worse than Dell, and that takes some doing...

OTOH, another part of me would like to know WHAT software business after they nuke the already horrid WebOS to go to "appliances and vehicles." Seriously?

HP software vs hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I use and manage HP hardware and software.
While their x86/itanium server range is great and well supported, their SAN appliances are not bad eithern'even if parts of it are not theirs but supported by them), but almost all their software sucks big balls. HP-UX is probably something lagging 10 years behind every other unix flavor. Their service management software is utter bullshit that is at best at pre-alpha stage, and their backup software line is bad at best.
So while I would choose their business line hardware (server, storage, not laptops or desktops), I would prefer to never use their crap software.

Google buys Motorola Mobility

[symbolset]

Some are saying that the Google buy of Motorola Mobility may have been a big factor in the decision to kill WebOS hardware. They can't afford to keep up with that level of investment against the iOS and Android ecosystems' dynamic synergy. Too hard for a third player to bootstrap here. I hope RIM is watching this. It's too late for Nokia to take this turn.

Re:Google buys Motorola Mobility

[hairyfeet]

Actually, and I'm sure everyone will laugh, but I think WinPhone is gonna end up taking the #3 slot, especially now that WebOS is out of the game. One thing MSFT has always been good at is giving businesses what they want and I have a feeling they'll release a shitload of GPOs for WinPhone along with an easy peasy way to push whatever apps you want the drones to have through WinServer.

So now that WebOS is history I think the final score with be iOS and Android trading #1 and #2 back and forth and WinPhone will be what RIM used to have with crackberry, the OS for the corporate environment. And RIM will be DOA, I had thought maybe Google might buy them but after snatching Motorola I don't see that happening. maybe HTC or even MSFT will snatch them for the IP?

OpenVMS

[ksd1337]

How will this affect their OpenVMS hardware and software sales?

Re:OpenVMS

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for Compaq/HP. I never understood why Compaq didn't make VMS Open Source in the late 1990's. There would have been a x86 port about 2 months later and we possibly it could have overtaken Linux. VMS at the time had clustering, HA journaling file systems and a huge software base. Compaq would have then made squillions on provision of layered products and enterprise support.

I hope they see some history and Open Source WebOS. They we could get even more competition.

BTW - we are a 100% HP hardware shop. I spend a measureable proportion of my time AVOIDING HP's "bloatware" software solutions. Look up Storage Essentials if you are curious.

Re:OpenVMS

[unixisc]

OpenVMS/AXP was the best combination to have, while Alpha was around. It would have made sense to both Compaq & DEC to keep OVMS for Alpha, instead of trying to cannibalize it w/ either a very unpopular OSF/1, or a very un-cooperative NT. In fact, DEC would have done well to have had only OSF/1 and NT for the Alpha, and offer linux or BSD to any customer who wanted Unix. They could have saved a whole lot of cash on not creating OSF/1 and maintaining it. Porting OVMS to Itanium or x86 never made sense - why would anybody buy OVMS if they had an x86? That's why it never made sense to kill the Alpha, or once that decision was made, OVMS should have been ended w/ it. I also agree - OVMS could have been released under some Open Source license, like MIT.

On the other hand...

[Junta]

They did drop 1.2 Billion on Palm and not more than a month after the first attempt at a product launch, they killed it dead. I can appreciate not throwing good money after bad, but it does show they are kinda directionless and could very well completely give up on hardware even 5 months after throwing money at something like that (and 3com for that matter).

That said, I would say HP laptops/desktops will go away, but I doubt they'll leave server business. This is fantastic news for Dell and IBM though. IBM couldn't compete on total contracts and so now HP will be on even ground with them, and now Dell is the only one willing to play the total stack... for now. I would, however, be very concerned if I was in the HP server division. They mentioned explicitly leaving the PC business to focus on services (EDS) and software, but didn't say anything on servers explicitly. They may stay in, but it sounds like perhaps it's not their priority. Apothker did come from the software side, so...

Re:On the other hand...

[Billly Gates]

Corporations and small businesses like to only buy from one vendor. This is why people buy Dell Poweredge servers even though I think they are garbage. So unless you have expensive specialized servers like Oracle and IBM, HP will lose marketshare in the server room too. They killed off OpenVMS and their Unix and seem more interested in plastic servers than the big iron systems.

This is great news for Dell and Lenovo. If I were starting a business tomorrow and needing PCs I would get some Dells or Lenovos and I can tell you the servers to serve them would also be from the same vendor. I could get discounts and get a unified support contract for them all.

HP is totally stupid. Or maybe the CEO is smart and plans to raid the company and more retarded stock brokers will boast the value of his shares and he will jump ship. What a shame. If you had a time machine and told me back in 1997 that HP would be in trouble selling off its desktop divisions to compete with Apple I would be on the floor laughing. There is no logical reason why HP ended this way other than stupid Fiona and pure greed. My guess is the good management fled the company during the last decade.

Re:On the other hand...

[geoffrobinson]

Based on what you said, I really hope they manage Vertica well. I enjoy working with the product and it is great in the Big Data space.

We'll see.

Re:On the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

. They killed off OpenVMS and their Unix and seem more interested in plastic servers than the big iron systems.

I won't deny the lack of interest (up till now?) on their business critical servers, but VMS (the 'Open' is silent) is still alive. Outsourced to India with most of its US side engineering and support 'axed' but still alive.

Headline above is wrong

[twoears]

The WSJ article, among other news stories, makes it clear that HP is spinning off the PC division, i.e. selling it, not shutting it. Conversely, they aren't spinning off the WebOS/Palm division, they're killing it.

Horrible timing for the product Demo...

[Anonymous Coward]

So funny and sad at the same time, I had to repost this comment from Shao128 on crackberry.com relative to a WebOS presentation today:

"I have kinda a funny story about this. I was invited (through my day job) to an HP event today to show us WebOS and more specifically the Touchpad. I tweeted a pic while I was there so you can see the proof http://twitter.com/#!/Shao128/status/104236657628282880

After 2 hours of telling us how great the WebOS/TouchPad was, and HPs level of dedication in the long run etc...

Just as we were wrapping up I got a BBM about the news, I read the quote from the press release out loud infront of a group of about 30 people and the guys from HP. Their first reaction was it was all rumours. Until I told them it was a press release from HP.COM.

I told them sorry to rain on your parade but it was relevant to what they were trying to pitch us."

Because they lack direction

[Junta]

Everything about this seems a bit dramatic, misguided and haphazard. I have no doubt they would forfeit such a contract at this point on a weakly supported whim. The buisness leadership clearly thinks hardware=bad, software/services/good, and so expect for HP hardware to get the shaft until finally killed off.

Cisco, Dell and IBM have a lot of reason to celebrate today, regardless of whether the server business is tied up in this.

Largest PC Maker?

[ceoyoyo]

Isn't HP the largest PC maker? That's going to be quite the boon for the rest of the manufacturers.

retarded move by HP

[xeno]

One has to wonder what the metrics and thresholds were for success. Honestly, given the uptake in the past few weeks, WebOS's position has been as positive as could be reasonably expected. Reviews that say WebOS is #2 in function to Android? That's fabulous. So why quit 10 steps out of the gate? If HP was in this for the long haul, they've terribly screwed up tactically. If they were looking for short-term results, they've terribly screwed up in their strategy. Any way you slide this, it's a failure of leadership, not market or technology.

What about VMS, HP-UX, and Itanium?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, HP is the only one still selling IA-64 hardware or writing proprietary operating systems for it. Will that go the way of SGI?

Re:What about VMS, HP-UX, and Itanium?

[unixisc]

At some point, Intel will itself have to drop Itanium, and once it does, HP/UX is dead, unless they resurrect PA-RISC. And OVMS? I never got the point of porting it to Itanium - would have made more sense for HP/Compaq to have kept Alphastations and Alphaservers around for that OS alone. Summary - all 3 of the above are essentially dead!

What now?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM sold its PC biz; M$ is going the way of the dodo; HP stops doin' h/w...

What now? Learn Chinese?

Re:Will not shed a tear

[thegarbz]

I have never had one positive experience with HP. NEVER. From their printers which required insane drivers, the bloatware on their PCs, even the hardware seems like it was way overpriced compared to other big box manufacturers. When I was young and fixed computers in the neighbourhood I had far more problems with HPs than any other. Now the latest HP server we have at work takes minutes just to get past a BIOS screen, and it had a hardware failure in the RAID controller after a month.

Good Riddance!

Of course the downside is the software is something that is most hated about HP, and now they plan to make it their core business :S

WebOS isn't the only software HP sells...

[Anonymous Coward]

The software group in HP is actually responsible for their Performance Suite of Enterprise software, including market-leading PPM, Quality, Performance, Security, and Operations applications. WebOS was part of the PC business, and by no means core to the business.

Although I am surprised they are ditching WebOS devices so soon after investing a heap into advertising and just launching the Pal Pre 3 in Europe.

Fiorina's personality is irrelevant to me.

[jamrock]

I couldn't care less about Fiorina's personality, and frankly it has no bearing on the success of the company. By all accounts Steve Jobs is a complete asshole to work for, the proverbial boss from hell, but investors will forgive anything if he delivers results. Fiorina did not deliver, and the acquisition of Compaq was in my opinion a dramatic strategic mistake. The culture of engineering innovation at HP seemed to go out the window on her watch, and the company became a low-margin mass producer.

I've compared her before with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. Both come from marketing backgrounds; when both assumed leadership of their respective companies engineers took a distant back seat; and investors rewarded both with flat stock prices in recognition of their inability to innovate and grow the business.

Re:Fiorina's personality is irrelevant to me.

[Doctor Faustus]

Both come from marketing backgrounds; when both assumed leadership of their respective companies engineers took a distant back seat

When Balmer took over Microsoft was roughly when Microsoft started making good products. Windows XP, .Net, and SQL Server 2000.

It was under Gates that MS had nothing going for them except marketing.

Re:Fiorina's personality is irrelevant to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's not really true. XP was an evolution of 2000 wich was an evolution of NT from 1993. .Net was an alternative to the Java license from Sun and SQL Server 2000 was a minor improvement from SQL Server 7.0, you can read an interview to Jim Gray where he says that improvements in SQL Server 2000 were already in version 7 but not exposed, the first version of SQL Server from MS.

Agilent WAS Hewlett Packard

[jamrock]

Agilent did not exist before 1999. Before that it was a division of HP, which created all the technology that Agilent now sells. Agilent was spun off from HP in 1999 in order to separate the test and measuring equipment business from the computer and peripherals divisions. Hewlett Packard is the single company most responsible for making Silicon Valley what it is.

WebOS developer program

[Windrip]

HP is committed to making the webOS developer program the world leader in developer benefits, growing the developer base, and helping developers showcase their products. Over the coming months, the webOS ecosystem will be growing dramatically as webOS is introduced to PCs and printers, and into the enterprise with a scale only HP can provide.

Jeebus, did anyone here sign on to this gobbler?

HP is one of the "Big 4"

[drgroove]

I'm a little surprised more /.'ers aren't familiar with HP's software and services division. HP is considered to be one of the "Big 4" of enterprise infrastructure, service, and asset management, along with CA, BMC, and IBM. HP's acquisition of EDS strengthened their professional consulting position, and put them squarely in competition with IBM as their main software/services competitor. Enterprise software is basically a license to print money. Companies and governments spend inordinate amounts of cash on the Big 4's closed-source software, enterprise license agreements, support contracts, and implementation services. If HP is anything like CA or IBM, they're making the vast majority of their money on enterprise software and services, and very little on PC's and devices. Spinning off or selling their PC / device manufacturing business made sense for IBM, and it makes sense for HP, especially in light of the consumer competition in that space. There simply isn't the same competition in the enterprise space, hence why the Big 4 can charge the inflated prices they do for their software and services.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[juventasone]

This. And it's not just software and services, they're keeping everything from the HP Enterprise Business and HP Imaging and Printing Group. This means LaserJet, ProLiant, ProCurve (or whatever they call it now), etc. is all hardware that is here to stay.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

If HP is anything like CA or IBM, they're making the vast majority of their money on enterprise software and services, and very little on PC's and devices.

Probably true, except for one omission: HP makes inkjet printer ink. This ink is insanely profitable, and I would expect to see HP hold onto its printer businesses even if it spins off consumer desktops, laptops, and monitors.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering HPNA and various other pieces of software are balls of shit waiting for flies, I'm willing to say their days are numbered.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

Enterprise Infrastructure software titles does not a software company make. Sure you can monitor anything you want with HP software. Problem is you can't actually DO anything with same. HP needs something like a DB2 and WebSphere and for IBM to shut down for 35 years in order to be on the same playing field in terms of software.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, indeed, i'm unfortunatly well familiar with HP's 'enterprise' software. it's horrible, bug ridden, over-complicated, over-priced pieces of code. i've even never met a consultant specialized in part X or Y of their portfolio who was able to implement it without logging a bunch of support cases because of discovered bugs. almost none of their software integrates in a decent matter (even though they're supposed to or at least it would make sense) so you end up writing it yourself, but ofcourse none of these have a unified way of dealing with anything even though most of they time one product is doing half the same tasks as the other product.
when i was in college, i really disliked MS because, you know, their software wasn't really good (this was in de 90ties, windows 95, please :S ), then when getting a job, then when i really started disliking commercial software, enterprise software is the most expensive horrible pieces of junk you'll ever witness in your life. CA, HP are the worst IMO.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

Software/services is big in HP, but not the #1 revenue generator.

From TFA:

"...the PC division was H-P's largest unit last quarter, with $9.59 billion in revenue..."
Further down there's a chart showing that for the first nine months of the fiscal year (ending Oct 31), they've made about $1.75 billion in operating profits from the PC business.

"Spinning out the computer business will improve H-P's overall profit margins, even though it would cut the company's revenue by roughly a third."

It's all about the margins. But still, that's a *lot* of money to be leaving on the table.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[b4dc0d3r]

And after Hurd left, the CEO from SAP took over. SAP, which sells vaporware and then you buy consulting to make it do exactly what you don't want.

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost wet myself at this story! From an email just received from HP regarding my new laptop order, giving me a tracking number:
|
|In transit
|SHANGHAI CN
|
"HP is considered to be one of the "Big 4" of enterprise infrastructure...." but they use sweat-shops in China to manufacture and ship? God Bless America!

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

I'm a little surprised more /.'ers aren't familiar with HP's software and services division.

Really? I'm not. The knowledge of the core Slashdot crowd has really slipped recently. It's like talking to the new hire sat opposite me in the office - they all know the buzzwords and think they know the tech, but dig in any depth and you find that they know nothing,

HP's acquisition of EDS strengthened their professional consulting position, and put them squarely in competition with IBM

Which is why I am surprised they took so long (if they really are ditching the hardware) as they have.

If HP is anything like CA or IBM, they're making the vast majority of their money on enterprise software and services, and very little on PC's and devices

Yep, although anecdotally in Europe anyway, our own customers seem to have good reports using HP's Services vs IBMs or CAs. I also find dealing with HP's own services as a third party much less hassle than IBMs which can be tortuously convoluted.

and it makes sense for HP

+1

Re:HP is one of the "Big 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

ArcSight, OpenView, etc!

Re:I like HP hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, HP's famous hardware division was long spun off as Agilent. IMHO that was when the old HP died. Fiorina became CEO just in time to reside over that... and then to kill the rest of HP by buying Compaq.

Sure, I'll buy that

[symbolset]

They'll buy the number 3 slot at 3% market share, with a net loss of $4 billion a year - because they dare not give up. Until they just don't have that kind of money to burn any more. Which will be sooner than you would believe possible.

Agree about RIM. I don't see them making a go of it.

How good the Windows Phone thing might be is irrelevant. Microsoft cannot force retail vendors to push the product on an unwilling public, and that's the end of that story. It is technologically impossible for Microsoft to make the thing wonderful enough to make it an aspirational product that the public demands from their retailer.

Re:Sure, I'll buy that

[hairyfeet]

Ya see, that's where you're wrong. To get #3 they won't have to push them retail, just push them on corporate which has always been MS territory anyway. they already have the leads and the contacts, they already have the saleforce, all they have to do is show that like the old crackberry you'll be able to drop WinPhone into a corporate environment and they can lock it down and control it from a central WinServer.

So I honestly don't think it will cost them much. Nokia makes good hardware, MSFT has the business customers pretty locked down, so the only real costs will be adding the hooks for GPO and AD along with backup solutions and encrypted communications that the head office can control. Tie Office in and have a mobile version on the WinPhone? Cha Ching!

So basically in 3 years, maybe 2, MSFT will be where RIM was before the fall. Every corporate drone will be carrying his WinPhone and having a heart attack if he doesn't have access to it. there was a reason why they called them Crackberries and MSFT will do the same by simply having Nokia just ape whatever hardware Apple comes out with. Should be an easy third no problem.

They just don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting past that niche. Weeeelllll maybe if they integrate XBLA into WinPhone, as there are a hell of a lot of Halo junkies and X360 owners. That might get them a little closer to #2, but I doubt they have a prayer of overcoming the twin juggernauts of iOS and Android.

Re:Sure, I'll buy that

[UnknowingFool]

Ya see, that's where you're wrong. To get #3 they won't have to push them retail, just push them on corporate which has always been MS territory anyway. they already have the leads and the contacts, they already have the saleforce, all they have to do is show that like the old crackberry you'll be able to drop WinPhone into a corporate environment and they can lock it down and control it from a central WinServer.

Um except for the fact that the WP7 is a consumer smartphone just like the iPhone which pretty much destroys your "corporate" theory. Adding to that is the WP7 does not run legacy WM6 apps nor has built-in encryption so why would any business look at it seriously? They might as well go with RIM or Android or iPhone.

Re:Sure, I'll buy that

[schnell]

To get #3 they won't have to push them retail, just push them on corporate which has always been MS territory anyway.

Except... it's, like, the exact opposite of that.

Four years ago smartphone purchases were driven by businesses. BlackBerries were the early smartphone leader, and MS entered the game with WinCE then Windows Mobile, which was chock full of enterprise-centric features. WM5/6 was an atrocious piece of dung from a usability standpoint, but it gathered a fair amount of enterprise IT mind/marketshare and was actually the preferred smartphone app developer platform until...

The iPhone came along and actually made a smartphone user-friendly, sparking the whole "consumerization of IT" trend we're still seeing today with mobile devices. By two years ago, the majority of smartphone purchasers were consumers instead of businesses, which meant that the way to win marketshare was by appealing to consumers. BlackBerry and Windows Mobile were still mainly aimed at business... and iPhone OS and Android originally had absolutely terrible (practically non-existent) enterprise feature support... but nonetheless iOS and Android became the big winners in the smartphone wars. (Later versions of iOS and Android started to make them more enterprise-friendly, but their primary appeal is still to consumers.)

This in turn spurred Microsoft to actually ditch their enterprise-friendly WM6.5 platform and replace it with the consumer-centric Windows Phone 7, ditching app backward compatibility, enterprise administration and lots of other corporate features in the process. So they have in fact done THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what you're suggesting. RIM by contrast stuck with their super enterprise-friendly OS but tried to bolt-consumer friendly features on top of it... and you can see how well that is(n't) working out. Neither MS nor RIM are in great strategic shape at the moment, but given the trends in the mobile world I think Microsoft's abandonment of enterprise in favor of consumers is actually a better long-term play in terms of driving volume and application development.

Didn't buy one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'm glad I didn't buy one. They only gave it a month.

HP S-UX

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend a billion then run the acquisition into the ground. I was looking forward to the Pre 3.... but it is not to be now I guess. Bastards!

Wrong people

[juventasone]

If you read the article you linked, the deal was with HP Enterprise Systems. Today's news is about splitting or selling HP Personal Systems Group.

Re:Wrong people

[celticryan]

If you read the article you linked, the deal was with HP Enterprise Systems. Today's news is about splitting or selling HP Personal Systems Group.

Yes, I understand that. I guess you missed the point that they were using this contract to force NASA to buy HP hardware... sorry not buy but lease since NASA no longer is in the business of owning desktop hardware.

Their new CEO is from SAP, remember ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The new CEO wants to focus on something he understands, like corporate software that will allow you to pickpocket the customer while they say 'thank you'. He doesn't understand hardware, that is just something the software runs on. I'm surprised the BOD will stand for this, the dismantling of yet another great American brand to improve a few quarterly profit statements.

SAP - German for "Our hand on your wallet'

HP - American for 'We want to out SAP SAP'

Re:Their new CEO is from SAP, remember ?

[unixisc]

I don't see how HP can overtake IBM in the SAP arena - IBM is pretty much emperor here as far as hardware goes.

Unsure

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what to think.
a. WebOS, disaster, saw it coming. Just play with the SDK for a day and you'll see why. There's no room for a 3rd or 4th player in the tablet space. They should have rebuild Palm's OS to run PALM's apps and have an APP Store before Apple ate it's lunch. Too bad, but I can't help but think that if HP didn't buy palm in the first place, it would have been acquired by google.
b. Spinning off the PC business, I'm assuming they mean the desktops (eg compaq and hp branded desktops and laptops) and not servers like IBM spun off their desktops and laptops.

If they're spinning off the servers I'd be questioning someones sanity. Sure the machines are not as good or stable as HP, but that's fixable. There's only 3 players or so in the server market and jettisoning this along with the service contacts seems loony.

Apple explicitly doesn't play in the server market (no the macmini is not a server, the mac pro is... but enterprise doesn't give a shit how pretty a system is and won't pay for the shiny.) It's Dell, IBM and HP. Maybe even Oracle, but I don't know of anyone foolish enough to use Oracle hardware given how evil the company has been.

Who will HP's PC business.....??

[rshimizu12]

I am interested to see who acquires HP's PC business. It will most likely be a Asian company.

Re:Who will HP's PC business.....??

[unixisc]

Maybe Acer? Or Asus or Gigabyte might decide to get into the business?

Re:Who will HP's PC business.....??

[rshimizu12]

Perhaps Asus or MSI. I personally think that whoever buys HP should license the name for a extended period of time or permanently.

Blame Carly Fiorina

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia, 'In April 2009, the business magazine web site Condé Nast Portfolio listed Fiorina as one of "The 20 Worst American CEOs of All Time",'

Re:Blame Carly Fiorina

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah , and blame also all these bean-counters. HP was a great company, but in the name of short-term profit, HP CEOs cut R&D and very interesting products:
                * hand held calculators: they were at the top. Cut R&D because not enough profit. Though it's not a small market ...
                    Furthermore, students which appreciate HP calculators will naturally be inclined to choose other HP products later.
                * HP-UX : some don't like it, but it's nevertheless very stable. R&D cut , current maintenance outsourced to India
                * HP-UX patches : not available anymore since last year without a contract. I think many old workstations/servers are in the hands of hobbyists/enthusiasts.Needless to say that these enthusiasts won't recommend HP products in their jobs
                * PA-RISC : definitely cut. However it was a great CPU but without R&D it can't compete.
                * Alpha : cut despite promising performances
                * Itanic : used only in servers, and on top on that Oracle will not maintain their database products for Itanium ....
                * etc

I think these HP CEOs lack on thing: long term vision , they are in charge for a few years in order to maximize profits at all costs. They make shareholders happy and in the meantime earn big profits for themselves.

Take other CEOs like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs to name a few: sure they are somewhat greedy but they are the founders of their companies and they all have a vision and don't cut R&D.

HP plans to re-target as a software company, well, sounds cool but which software ? Tivoli ? uh? not even a database, so they'll rely on other vendors ... great strategy :)

Competitors:
IBM has DB2,websphere, AIX, PowerPC, mainframes and a myriad of enterprise products
Oracle : Oracle , MySql, Java, Sparc
Microsoft : Office Suite, SQL Server, Windows, .Net, etc
Apple: OS X, iPhone, iOS, iTunes, PA Semi etc

Sounds like HP's future is quite doomed.

A former HP enthusiast.

                   

HP is $h1t anyways

[Anonymous Coward]

HP has gone so far down hill I'd be glad to see it go.

Printers: Load way too much crap on the computer. They change and push out way too many models. Their quality has gone downhill.

Computers: meh. Their support sucks. Call their support line, get transferred a bunch of times over phone lines with worse quality than really bad AM radio.

They lost their way and don't know how to produce high quality, consistent products that they were known for in the early days.

Dell

[unixisc]

In fact, Dell is exactly the company that can sell WP 7 or 8, if they can get it on X-Scale. That can be their next X-Scale platform. Too much of acquisitions - Palm bought Be & Handspring, HP bought Palm and now HP wants to spin off Palm - no place for smaller companies anymore.

RISC survivors

[unixisc]

Thankfully, MIPS as a company is still alive and available to anyone for whom ARM is inadequate. And Oracle still supports UltraSparc. IBM supports Power7 - now into the 7th generation, if not more, and Power is also an openly published architecture, if any chipmaker wants to build other Power microprocessors. One can still build Power based workstations if one wants to. Only causalities were Alpha and PA-RISC. Alpha was dead the day Microsoft pulled NT from it, since they were never the biggest Unix player - those were Sun, HP and IBM. MIPS lost once SGI went under, but still survives thanks to routers and Nintendo: however, their processor is competitive w/ ARM on power consumption, and capable of supporting Android. They also are 64-bit, which ARM ain't, should that be needed by, say, Microsoft for WP 8 & beyond. Since NT did exist previously for MIPS, Microsoft could port Windows 8 or WP 8 to that platform, if they needed a complete solution w/ which to challenge others. In any case, Itanium is not far from swimming w/ the fishes. Then the only platforms left will be ARM, x64, Power (used by X-box), MIPS and Sparc. The first 2 - no questioning their continued success. Both Power & MIPS can find niches in the tablet market, while once Itanium dies, Oracle can position Sparc against IBM for enterprise servers. Essentially, leaving HP irrelevant in this space

I'm not OK with this...

[helios17]

Just as well, judging by the latest HP laptop I've seen, they weren't very good at it. I won't argue your point because you are right. However, HP makes one of the finest laser printers on the market. HP was one of the first hardware companies that worked with Linux OOTB. The firmware was there with it as well. Good to note that Samsung and a couple other printer manufacturers have followed suit, but I'll miss my little 75.00 B&W laser printers that last for years and years.

Or

[ThatsNotPudding]

Or Westinghouse. Or Kodak.

Autonomy creates super magic computer?

[AwesomeMcgee]

Can anyone tell me what this thing actually does?? http://www.autonomy.com/content/Products/products-idol-server/index.en.html HP offered to buy this company, which for all appearances, serves a great purpose: Enterpriseyness

Seriously, what the eff do they do? It reads like they invented AI, but I think I would have heard about that. If HP is serious about this company, I think someone at the top is enforcing a new mass hysteria policy.. Either that, or I am just seriously too dumb for this Autonomy company who is clearly the "market leader" as their quote banner says (in what market again??)..

HP PA-RISC and Itanium

[John Bayko]

"Itanium" was originally HP's internal replacement for PA-RISC, to leapfrog the next generation of RISC processors in performance. The deal with Intel was intended to split development cost, so the competition couldn't keep up (HP already stopped making expensive fabs, hiring Intel to make PA-RISC). Management changes in both companies led to Itanium being handled by people who didn't understand the original strategy, or the technology, so it was "redesigned to death" until competitors caught up, and it was finally released.

It was a gamble by HP that static program analysis with simpler circuitry would be faster than dynamic analysis, in the same way that simpler RISC outperformed CISC, but it didn't pay off. It turns out that dynamic analysis became such a small percentage of the transistor count that it no longer mattered. RISC processors create their own VLIW instruction bundles (at least the last Alpha and later POWER did), and CISC processors can translate code on the fly internally with almost no speed penalty. I think even the most recent Itaniums ignore the static information and regroup dynamically for better performance.

Still, Itanium is among the top performers for number crunching, and if it had kept to its original plan, probably would have been a leader for at least a few years, which would have been great for HP. As it is, the main accomplishment was strategic - to convince most competitors to stop developing their high end CPUs (Alpha, MIPS).

Re:HP PA-RISC and Itanium

[unixisc]

Still, Itanium is among the top performers for number crunching, and if it had kept to its original plan, probably would have been a leader for at least a few years, which would have been great for HP. As it is, the main accomplishment was strategic - to convince most competitors to stop developing their high end CPUs (Alpha, MIPS).

Thanks for the analysis of why Itanium failed to surpass the Alpha & POWER. The 'accomplishment' you mention is pretty negative - killing 3 of the best RISC microprocessors there in the market in anticipation of something that never materialized. MIPS, thankfully, is still there and could try making inroads into current ARM territory, particularly in the Android and potentially, WP8 space. Alpha, had it survived, could have been segmented for different markets, which could have solved their low yield (for high speeds) and cost problems.

Forget Alpha & POWER, did Itanium even end up being a good successor to PA-RISC? How do they run PA-RISC binaries, or has everything that matters been re-compiled? Had PA-RISC continued on its own development cycle and simply been shared w/ Intel from that point in the same way as Itanium, wouldn't it (even w/ 20-20 hindsight) have been a better upgrade option for PA-RISC, and a good one for Intel, albeit a bad one for non-Linux/BSD unixes like Solaris, SCO, et al? Even for Apple, since NEXTSTEP previously already existed on PA-RISC, Apple could have ported OS-X/Darwin to the PA-RISC relatively quickly, and had a good upgrade from PPC.

Re:HP PA-RISC and Itanium

[John Bayko]

In case you're still reading this thread...

For compatibility, I think they had an emulator to run PA-RISC programs on Itanium. One of the incentives for starting an incompatible design was a project called Dynamo, which was like a Java JIT interpreter which analyses a program as it's running, and can optimise the most used parts. One surprise was that they could speed up a program by translating from PA-RISC to PA-RISC - the runtime optimisations in software were better than hardware (at the time).

A similar strategy was followed by Transmeta, interpreting 80x86 programs on custom VLIW CPUs. It failed partly due to Intel manipulation (basically giving a much better price to customers who never use a competing product), but partly from inconsistent performance - that matters less on a server, but more on a laptop, which was Transmeta's focus. Java is used mostly on servers, so the JIT and optimisation works well there.

I think continuing PA-RISC could have matched Itanium performance (if Itanium had not been delayed) eventually, but at the time it wasn't a sure thing. The real question was whether to put the dynamic optimisation in software or hardware, and a number of research projects hinted that software might be capable of far more than hardware (in addition to HP Dynamo, IBM's DAISY project did much the same thing, as well as Java JITs and Transmeta, and the Macintosh which just switched from 680x0 to PowerPC using emulation). Many people thought instruction sets would be irrelevant (Transmeta released several CPUs, all incompatible - no backwards compatibility barriers to newer, faster designs).

The idea is not dead though. Look up the Low Level Virtual Machine, or LLVM, which is used by Apple. One example is in the Macintosh OpenGL stack - rather than including a lot of branches to test for various settings, the LLVM optimiser basically strips out all those out when they don't change (or are handled by hardware), leaving behind simpler code for displaying windows and other graphics. Probably other things too, but that's all that's publicly announced. I suspect Apple is aiming for CPU independence eventually.

Re:HP PA-RISC and Itanium

[unixisc]

Thanks for this info.

Essentially, from what's been observed, VLIW has served better in the DSP and ASIC markets where the instruction sequences needed are fewer and more predictable, and where compatibility is not facing the end user. For general purpose CPUs, it'd be more problematic, since the compilers necessary to perform the required dynamic analysis would have to cover just about every possible scenario, and get it right, since its effects would be obvious to the end user.

I think to an extent, Apple has a level of CPU independence, as NEXTSTEP had been proven to port quite speedily to PA-RISC and SPARC. So if their underlying BSD kernel already runs on their A6 or A7, then they'd already be a good way there.

Re:HP PA-RISC and Itanium

[John Bayko]

[...] since the compilers necessary to perform the required dynamic analysis would have to cover just about every possible scenario

Just to clarify, it's not the compilers (though those are important too), it's the runtime which does the optimisation. The problem is the overhead required. The end result may crunch numbers faster in the end, but it may slow down unexpectedly after the execution has been profiled long enough to get data indicating a hot spot, and the optimiser kicks in. It's a little like the problem that garbage collection has - in the end, GC is faster than manual memory management (with few exceptions), but program freezes when it kicks in are annoying.

Multiple cores help - the optimiser can work in the background, with no slowdown and only imperceptible pauses when the binary blocks are replaced. But it's still a trade-off because you might have a better use for that second core.

Anyway, dynamic optimisation optimises how the program actually executes, it doesn't have to predict anything. The main advantages are that it can optimise in ways hardware can't (e.g. remove dead code entirely), and it can be updated with a software upgrade.

Oh, by CPU independence, I meant that the same code can be run without caring what it runs on, like Java. Previously Apple and NeXT simply included binaries for more than one CPU, but LLVM has the potential to perform the final compile step either at installation or runtime, as well as dynamic optimisation while running.

Dear Anonymous Dickhead

[jamrock]

Did I get it right? You are sad that WebOS didn't make it. But it's a happy iPad owner.

For me this is like "To bad he died, oh if I could just hold my finger and not have pulled the trigger..." If you wanted WebOS to have a chance why in hell didn't you bought a TouchPad? You are part of the market that said NO to WebOS so don't be sorry for it.

Here I go breaking my rule not to reply to Anonymous Cowards...

Yes, I am sad that an interesting interface idea didn't get a chance to show off to the general public the talents of the engineering team. What does the fact that I'm happy with my iPad have anything to do with it? Are you such a partisan jackass that you think because I own one it somehow disqualifies me from appreciating the good points of a rival device? By your pathetic rationale Nikon owners should be prohibited from saying good things about Canon cameras.

Are you such a purblind, hidebound fool that you believe that for something to succeed something else must fail? The very concept that other people have differing opinions is obviously a shock to a deep thinker such as yourself.

Are you such a narrow-minded simpleton that you believe that my owning an iPad doomed the TouchPad to irrelevance? HP didn't need my help; they did it themselves when they released a half-baked tablet and expected people to buy them.

For your information I didn't even buy my iPad; it was a gift. For your further information, I received it before the TouchPad was even announced, so it would have taken some sophisticated time-traveling gymnastics to have chosen one instead. For your further consideration, while I appreciate the interface, all reviews I read about the TouchPad stated that it was an unfinished product, and I don't know about you, but I don't have money to waste on a device that I am reasonably certain beforehand will probably disappoint me, just because I like the interface. There are others, but these are the main reasons why I "didn't bought one".

Fucking idiot.

crazy talk

[frovingslosh]

If I was that crazy i could just buy an overpriced Sony and flush the other thousand down the crapper.