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HP Discontinues webOS (Widespread $100 TouchPad sales)

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Pristine_Condition said:
This makes me sad. As a former Palm Pilot fanboy, WebOS was the legacy, now lost, of all that stuff that was so wondrous at the time..
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I poured out a 40 when Handspring died. There are no more tears.

photo-10.jpg


Yes, that's my old Treo 90. Last of the Handspring PDA's. I still keep it in a drawer for who knows why. :)
 
Web OS was amazing, it could have been so much but I truly believe that Palm destroyed the brand and HP was too late.
 
dream said:
Truthfully, webOS was never that great and I always thought it was funny how its proponents cited its meaningless differentiated features as selling points.
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I'm pretty sure that is just your opinion. I have used all of the major smartphones software and webOS was the one that just felt right.
 
Can someone explain to me why they killed it so fast? is it that expensive to run day to day? i just cant wrap my head around investing so much money on the development of an operating system and then killing it if it doesnt sell a certain amount of units in 2 months.
 
zephervack said:
Can someone explain to me why they killed it so fast? is it that expensive to run day to day? i just cant wrap my head around investing so much money on the development of an operating system and then killing it if it doesnt sell a certain amount of units in 2 months.
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The sales of the Touchpad were abysmal. Nowhere near KIN levels, but it was pretty bad.

edit: Also, they probably saw the stats and knew it wouldn't have legs sales-wise.
 
zephervack said:
Can someone explain to me why they killed it so fast? is it that expensive to run day to day? i just cant wrap my head around investing so much money on the development of an operating system and then killing it if it doesnt sell a certain amount of units in 2 months.
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HP did not spend much on developing webOS. That was done by Palm before they were bought. Also they are not killing webOS but webOS based hardware.
 
zephervack said:
Can someone explain to me why they killed it so fast? is it that expensive to run day to day? i just cant wrap my head around investing so much money on the development of an operating system and then killing it if it doesnt sell a certain amount of units in 2 months.
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Leo Apotheker: "TouchPad sales did not meet our expectations. ... Our TouchPad has not gained enough traction in the marketplace."

e:
"We have been tracking webOS... we were successful at launching the software, but we are exploring options to leverage the software in the future. However, our devices were not successful.
Due to market conditions, continuing to execute in this market space no longer makes sense for HP's shareholders."
 
samus i am said:
I'm pretty sure that is just your opinion. I have used all of the major smartphones software and webOS was the one that just felt right.
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It had a great UI. The tradeoff was shitty performance and a misguided application framework.
 
"We have been tracking webOS... we were successful at launching the software, but we are exploring options to leverage the software in the future. However, our devices were not successful.
Due to market conditions, continuing to execute in this market space no longer makes sense for HP's shareholders."
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i.e. the iPad.
 
Guardian Bob said:
WTF at LEAST try it for a year and see what's working. Did you expect to be number 1 or 2 in TWO months?
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Yes?

"in the tablet world we’re going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus"
 
So, what I'm getting from this is that HP and it's shareholders got cold feet by the competition after only a month or so on the market. wtf?

This day feels very weird right now.
 
Seth C said:
Yeah. If they shut it down entirely you wouldn't even be able to use the thing out of the box.
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Really? You couldn't just sideload current/homebrew apps and use it as a cheap ereader/media player/browser?
 
Guardian Bob said:
So, what I'm getting from this is that HP and it's shareholders got cold feet by the competition after only a month or so on the market. wtf?
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I think that move was planed some time ago. Just like Microsoft planned to kill the KIN after the release.
 
Guardian Bob said:
So, what I'm getting from this is that HP and it's shareholders got cold feet by the competition after only a month or so on the market. wtf?
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They dropped the price by 25% and still have not seen any uptake. It probably became a subsidized product at that point (especially since they depend on third party retailers to sell, who usually take off a big bite of sales price). That including the cost of all those commercials, on top of the devastating lost of Beats Audio to HTC, probably doomed it.
 
Think about it. They quietly launched the Veer. They "soft launched" the TouchPad and celebrated the "real launch" by slashing prices. They exiled the Pre 3 to be sold unlocked in Europe. There was never any intention to build the webOS business; HP was just moving existing inventory and honoring commitments.


numble said:
They dropped the price by 25% and still have not seen any uptake. It probably became a subsidized product at that point (especially since they depend on third party retailers to sell, who usually take off a big bite of sales price). That including the cost of all those commercials, on top of the devastating lost of Beats Audio to HTC, probably doomed it.
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You're getting good at this, numbler!
 
Eel O'Brian said:
Really? You couldn't just sideload current/homebrew apps and use it as a cheap ereader/media player/browser?
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Pretty sure you could. Unless he is talking about the initial bootup when it asks you to make a profile. But if I remember correctly you can use a google profile which wouldn't be blocked.
 
They just said they are taking a greater loss on Touchpads (on top of an existing loss) because of the price drop. And they would keep losing a lot of money for 1-2 years if they kept it going.
 
samus i am said:
Pretty sure you could. Unless he is talking about the initial bootup when it asks you to make a profile. But if I remember correctly you can use a google profile which wouldn't be blocked.
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Great! Then I'm all in at $99 or less!
 
"3:25 pm "WebOS would require significant investments over the next five years, generating risk without clear rewards.""

From TIMN's liveblog. Ouch.
 
Wow, they really expected instant success.


"About a year ago, we made a bet on webOS. At that time we set clear metrics and milestones to measure success. The sellthough of the TouchPad was not what we expected. Our expectation was to establish TouchPad as the clear number 2 platform in tablets."
"It was clear that pricing parity would not generate demand, and we cut prices by $100."
"WebOS would require significant investments over the next five years, generating risk without clear rewards."
 
5:24 pm "About a year ago, we made a bet on webOS. At that time we set clear metrics and milestones to measure success. The sellthough of the TouchPad was not what we expected. Our expectation was to establish TouchPad as the clear number 2 platform in tablets."

5:25 pm "It was clear that pricing parity would not generate demand, and we cut prices by $100."

5:25 pm "WebOS would require significant investments over the next five years, generating risk without clear rewards."
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There you have it. No confidence at all.
 
I think this is Josh’s comment liveblogging at TIMN

"Listening to montone printer division results after hearing webOS get eviscerated is like some kind of terrible nightmare."
 
LCfiner said:
I think this is Josh’s comment liveblogging at TIMN

"Listening to montone printer division results after hearing webOS get eviscerated is like some kind of terrible nightmare."
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I can't wait to hear him talk on the next podcast..... going to be one for the ages.
 
Guardian Bob said:
These people are huge idiots. Didn't they think of the cost before they bought Palm? RIM should have bought them :/
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I think they definitely had unreasonable expectations of how new WebOS products would sell considering their previous sales performance with Palm.

so, yeah, they blew 1.2b on the purchase plus whatever they spent developing the new hardware.

very poorly handled, imo.

maybe they’ll get something more useful from the palm patents. I dunno

edit:


jagowar said:
I can't wait to hear him talk on the next podcast..... going to be one for the ages.
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ditto. I think I’ll listen to the livestream tonight. don’t want to wait till tomorrow for the reactions. dude loved webOS.
 
Brutal. Here are some quotes from the earnings call going on right now.


"We have been tracking webOS... we were successful at launching the software, but we are exploring options to leverage the software in the future. However, our devices were not successful. Due to market conditions, continuing to execute in this market space no longer makes sense for HP's shareholders."
Click to expand...
"About a year ago, we made a bet on webOS. At that time we set clear metrics and milestones to measure success. The sellthough of the TouchPad was not what we expected. Our expectation was to establish TouchPad as the clear number 2 platform in tablets."
Click to expand...
"It was clear that pricing parity would not generate demand, and we cut prices by $100."
Click to expand...
"WebOS would require significant investments over the next five years, generating risk without clear rewards."
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Source.

edit: SUPERBEATEN. This is what I get for going pee before posting.

So it's now iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Unless RIM's QNIX turns them around.
 
Heh, and my boss wanted to get an HP Touchpad for the server lab to demo stuff.

numble said:
They just announced:
$1 billion loss for running webOS on top of the $1.2 billion spent for Palm.
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HA!
 
watership said:
Brutal. Here are some quotes from the earnings call going on right now.

Source.

edit: SUPERBEATEN. This is what I get for going pee before posting.

So it's now iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Unless RIM's QNIX turns them around.
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I doubt RIM makes it 2 more years.
 
The TIMN guys missed some things, but I won't blame them--she was running through a zillion numbers relating to printers, software, webOS, etc. as fast as possible.
 
wait... so the (incredibly small amount of) early adopters of the TouchPad are getting ROYALLY screwed? It's been on the market for what, like a month?? And they are already annoucning they are discontinuing it???
 
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