HP's Lack of Invention is Why webOS Failed

A good read. First thing that comes to mind when I think HP is cheap molded plastic.

webOS failed because HP has retards at the helm.

HP let their tablet fail just like Microsoft does so often with their products. They didn't support it. They also weren't able to give it any resources or time. I agree with clonazepam- I too equate HP with cheap molded plastic. And it's one thing if your products are solid but not very flashy or innovative (think Lenovo) but it's completely another if your products are trash that have zero reliability and are not consumer friendly. Oh and by the way, installing 20 different trial programs and useless applications is NOT consumer friendly, especially when you do stupid stuff like sell laptops running Vista with 1 GB of RAM to unsuspecting consumers along with all the bloatware.

"A good read"??? Seriously. Wolfgang is a symbol of typical media F.U.D journalism in technology topics. After having relied on HP enterprise servers and storage for over a decade, your infant dribble is pathetic. No, HP doesn't need to dabble in pathetic consumer crap, but they are rock solid in the enterprise. The problem with so-called "journalists" that write these "hey, I woke up, got a Starbucks, and thought I'd write on the latest tech topic of the day" is they've never spent a day having to provide 101% uptime and it's easy on their consumer device to write whatever drivel spills out of their trap. Useless waste of thought as usual with no benefit to persons actually working IN the tech industry.

Great article, balanced and well said. You forget one other thing, not many palm people stuck around following the buyout. And those who did were gone within months. My faith in HP died when Rahul Sood left. Up till that point it was his excitement that really had me interested in the future of HP branded webOS products, but once he was gone, I looked at what was left of "Palm" and it wasn't much.

I know there would be the "easy opportunity" for some readers to trash the entire analysis and passion in this article for the suspicious reason that Apple is many times mentioned as the company to have in mind. Again that would be very short sighted. But personally, I can't deny I expected more from HP. I believed the year HP took to develop their tablet and the Palm acquisition would be enough to produce maybe the best iPad challenger or even something better, different. And this situation with HP comes to reveal more than three things but I want to point just to 3. Apple has done very well their job with the iPad, even if you can't take any advantage of it or you hate it because its Apple. It is nothing trivial to produce a massive popular computer gadget. Second, HP's own big problems to produce one. My third conclusion is another big denial for many: The desktop PC tower form factor as we came to know it is dying as the massive default computer world wide. HP also announced a spin off of their PC business. What could happen tomorrow with the PC that could regain the concept to a better situation I don't know. Maybe the gamers in general could buy the PC more time in market interest. The hardcore PC users will always be there. I know I will use the tower PC while I find it the best way and economically faceable for me to produce my job.

Well, I ordered the 16gb version @ $99. Hopefully someone will come out with a way to load Android on it. I'll just use it to surf the web and check email when I am out and about.

I definitely disagree about HP small business and consumer OEM PCs. While they aren't flashy or gaming machines they are actually pretty good quality and from my experience have very good reliability. Their tech support is also quite good as is their warranty if you need it.

I think HP is done as a major force in the computing business if they completely abandon the PSG entirely. It screams FAILURE at the most elemental level.

I would agree that HP needs to streamline their PC lines and bring the overall hardware quality back to the levels they enjoyed around the late 90s and early 00s.

They should kill the entry level models and concentrate on mid and higher priced units.

I've always been a big fan of their products . More worrying is the fact that it seems like US companies are just giving up the PC business without even a fight at all.

Sorry but this is DEPRESSING TO ME!!!!!!!

HP PLEASE ....DON'T GIVE UP THE PC BUSINESS!

Funny commentary, so true; then I associate HP brand to good laptops and printer, and enterprise stuff, IBM did not throw out core business with Lenovo but HP is doing it.

My insistence on Windows Mobile or even older Palm OS is purely for one app: TCPMP; threw that out on webOS I pretend Palm does not exist (same goes Windows Phone 7) That surely says what a "platform" is, wreck that and you effectively screw the entire package.

I wonder if HP is going the same way as 3DFX

... two big companies bid for palm because of WebOS: HP and Apple... but they sold to HP because of a matter of principle... the designer of WebOS was a former apple employee... if apple would win the bid, i think the iOS and WebOS together would be a awesome thing... because of apple innovative spirit and skill to proper copy and enhance functions...

What do you expect? They put some software guy as a CEO, who has no idea what to do with hardware and he sells it. Let's all make software and sell it each other!

I wonder how this assessment will change given that HP is giving away the pad for $149 for the 32GB model, flooding the market with it and opening the door for a usable platform?

That is all fine and dandy, but corporate welfare (the tax payers will foot the bill for your failure through a tax deduction) is ultimately why this product failed.

They gave up at the 1st sign of adversity and took the tax deal to landfill the product rather than be confident that they could eventually succeed.

Nobody ever succeeded by giving up immediately, or so I've been taught. Why does this rule not apply to HP? Let alone why are they rewarded with a golden pillow to land on for falling on their ass?

Ultimately the decision makers will not be punished, only the people who did the actual work.

Despite what the current HP CEO thinks, HP actually does have a good presence in the consumer computer market. HP is quite different from IBM which presence trails behind many competitors. Sure the profit margin is not what it is used to be, and PC business is now a mature and stagnant business like car industry is. Nonetheless, a source of profit is still profit. Is HP really bleeding money in this segment? Why give up the leadership position when there is no real reason to? Heck even my company purchase new PC exclusively from HP alone. There is a lot of goodwill there.

I feel HP once again manages to employ a leader who is too keen on showing that he can make a difference and is willing to risk the whole company future to achieve his own goal. Maybe they should have just employ someone who is more on defense and streamline the business instead of someone who tries to achieve more growth even when there is no sound business plan.

great now release the webos installer for ipad please. http://bit.ly/nSJwW1

Yeah, especially their new CEO - he's a software guy, so naturally he's gonna turn HP into a software company - pathetic! It really is the worst of American business (mis)management: management by executive fiat

Wow this is mind blowing yet sad news.
I remember back in the early to mid 1970's
HP had an awesome line of advanced programmable calculators (almost microcomputers).Easy to write complex programs on.A very compelling well built practical line of products they had back then.I myself owned a HP-67 and a friend of mine had the earlier HP-65.Far more practical,versatile and useful than the clunky big Altair 8800 or the IMSAI 8080 monstrosities.Oh those early big microcomputers were cool though but just impractical.Even Steve Wozniak (I think) of Apple Computer fame worked in HP's programmable calculator division before creating his own Apple I microcomputer.
They (HP) had developed such a reputation that even NASA astronauts and engineers used their programmable calculators during the late 1960's and the decade of the 1970's.

So they are even considering abandoning their PC line too?
Ouch and even mind boggling.I was even considering getting a HP notebook with a AMD A4 Fusion CPU with a very good battery life,decent CPU power,small size that could even be used for light or lower res gaming for around $380.
I'll have to reconsider my decision if they decide to sell off their PC business.What a sad ending.

apple , microsoft , google , hp , dell , ibm , and every tablet phone laptop desktop and software big household name which are all worth multi billions of dollars and have fleeced consumers out of every dime they can spare - all have two things in common : they were virtually unknown twenty five years ago and they will be a faint fading memory twenty five years in the future . mark my words .

doggrell3000, how can anyone take your word seriously when you are completely incapable of either remembering how long most of the companies you named have been around, or you're completely incapable of such simple arithmetic, or... well, there's nothing redeeming from your post for claims, as the only company you mentioned by name that's not been around over 25 years is Google.

doggrll3000 will be dead in less than 10 years from a drug overdose - mark my words

You can invent reasons like "lack of innovation" but it's not why it has failed.

A couple of weeks ago I didn't even check what it does, before ruling it out, when considering what tablet to buy. Yet another web platform, pushed by a single manufacturer who's just trying to gain market share, didn't sound promising at all, I saw this obvious end coming, albeit not so soon.

And all the blabla about cool platforms, dual/quad core CPUs, gigapuxel cameras with 2mm lens, wake up people. It's all crap. Screen quality, smooth UI (and no, you don't need dual/quadcore for it, just optimized code, not bloated bytecode running in a JVM with no JIT) and battery life is all that one has to care about about these gadgets. Oh, and the fact that you can install applications on it, without needing some greedy bastard's approval.

And one more thing, pardon if it hurts your feelings, but mobile OS functionality at the moment is VERY VERY VERY BASIC. Even this basic thing is hard for google to keep it up, but only because there are gazillion of hardware configurations to support. There is NOT A SINGLE mobile OS out in the wilds, having more functions than what a group of dozen developers could achieve within 12 month using Linux as a base (for a particular gadget).

dear hairballs
i could be wrong about my predictions . i have been wrong before . i did not state how long these big technology companies have been in business - only that they were unknown to the mass consumer twenty five years ago . my point is that we should not underestimate the accelerating pace and sweeping change that will render our present electronic marvels completely obsolete within shorter and shorter cycles of time . as for my possible demise from a drug overdose - if it didn't happen in the seventies and eighties ( given my truly irrational behavior in those days ) then i doubt it will prove to be my final means of departing my virtual existence .

No wonder the patent system is a mess. 265 patents a week and that's just from 3 companies.

So, they want to become mainly a software company (http://www.freedomcurrent.com/trendingnews/hp-shakes-things-up-and-purchases-autonomy.html).
The same company that wrote the most bloated printer drivers out there?
yeah, sign me up for that.....

If this is an indication of how they plan on backing future projects, by all means, let them leave the PC business. Plenty other companies will take up the slack.

dear doggrell3000.

It seems you may not h\even have been born back then. I was! I can tell you that in 1986, Microsft was EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN, with their MS-Dos, and all the other companies trying to copy them! like Dr-Dos etc. They were also making their DOS system available for other home computer systems besides PC's.
IBM was a MUST have, if you could afford it! It was a business computer and was starting to get in the homes too!
The 8086 & '286 clones were starting and the '386 was making its debout.

Apple was big too!!! You would want to be seen using an Apple II__ (add suffice, ie "+" / GS etc) or a MACINTOSH. Can you say that word? They were all over schools too.
HP was reknown for their printers even back then and also computers and calculators!
For Dell I am not sure. As for Google, we all know they started on a patent for a search algorithm in the late 1990's ;-)

So you my dear sir must have grown up in some other // universive, but how you crossed to ours is a mystery to me ;-)

Now my opion would be for Google to BUY that part that was PALM and get the patents too, but I think that was all that HP wanted.

I was actually hoping for a Japanese major to licence WebOS and put it out to the masses, I had even made early hardware specs for a tablet for it... Put an OMAP5, with 8Gb of LPDDR2 SoC, with a PentaBand HSPA+ Chip, Mini USB (micro USB connectors are flimy same as the cables) have bluetooth, WiFi a/b/g/n300 with special aerials, optimising 3x3:3 plus serial/IrDA (4Mbit) port (for industrial applications for those that are in the know), battery banks, think of the batteries in an average smart mobile phone that are about 1500 mAh, well x8 bays! would be sold with 2 batteries, and then just add more as everyones needs vary. Secondary mini-usb port, to support charging OTHER devices, like phone etc.
Then it was to have a 1.8" 320Gbyte HDD, 1 internal XDHC socket, 1 External XDHC and a USB 3 port, a SHARP capacitive touch screen, a Fastrax UC430 GPS, accelerometer, magentometer, 2 Gb main user FRAM (to stay with the same supplier of SoC(T.I)) or MRAM (not NAND/Flash memory), interactive Pico projector, 3D hand gesture, dual front and dual back camera's with the rear ones having optical zoom, with a minimum of 12MPx each for stereoscopic, electrostatic speakers, high quality T.I. audio solution (not mentioning specific) etc.

If anyone else is interested, I can go on in more details about specialised buttons (locations) and what not that would have knocked off nearly all current and near future Tablets!

I was trying to get contact info for Sharp, since that was the manufacturer of my choice, but did not get the direct contact info for the department I was interested.

In case any of you are unaware, they are als othe first to produce a clamshell Android phone, and also their screens are of exceptional quality.

Statement: All the above specs are my property for a concieved product, but not materialised.

Interesting news. Apple is a device maker with appealing, "sexy" user interfaces and well integrated software. Do they make anything that is "business quality"? - not really. Could they - sure, but that isn't their bread and butter. HP, like so many other business-oriented companies, haven't shown their creativity to appeal to the same customers that Apple does. Heck, I can buy three vanilla PCs for the the price of one Apple PC and you tell me which serves the customer best? The business customer and low to middle class consumer choses on price - and by the way, the HP PC lasts just as long or longer than the fragile but pretty Apple toy. It turns out that Apple wins now because of (1) Better user experience through innovation (2) Huge margins. Apparently HP has given up on their ability to compete on creativity in the consumer space - might be a good move for them if they can actually innovate in the business and services market - we'll see.

Yep, this about says it all. What I don't agree with is that WebOS was a contender when HP bought it. When Palm released it with the Pre, it was awesome, and a two horse race with iOS. But Palm dropped the ball, and it stagnated almost immediately. And as I sat and watched Android become the leader that webOS was supposed to be when it was released, over the following year, I was surprised that HP bought them. A huge influx of cash - maybe, but then nothing. No significantly different new phones (Pre plus - seriously? thats version 1.001) no new products (remember the speculation that they might not even do a tablet?). Palm might as well have sold to a financial investors firm like so many others, where the company is dismantled as they skim all the profits for stockholders, and the product dies because reinvestment is dead.

This is ridiculous.

I agree with the other commenter s about the new CEO's vision, the lack of it actually.

The thing is, nobody cares about webOS. What did it provided in terms of running applications? Probably nothing out the ordinary. Was it stable and how was it licensed? Without hype a platform like this cannot succeed.

If you really want a platform. Try to improve something in Linux. That is base linux.

Seriously just bring out two nice (low and high end) touch PC's with amd's new Fusion apu's and a decent tablet with one of ARM's new processors.
Put Android on the arm processors.
If it's beefy enough to run windows, just run windows 7 on it.

Go into the smartphone market. Seriously, this is a big opportunity if done right.

HP is not a software company. From this failure it just proves to me that they didn't know what they were going to do with the OS. They just saw the potential $ from the booming mobile market and of course its a no brainer to buy, but its not a no brainer to make it a success. It takes talent and HP simply does not have the talented S/W devs like google has.

I have written apps for both webOS and iOS and I can tell you HP supported webOS on the developer level better than apple does. The SDK, VM, and application submission, where all free. They updated the webOS with, exhibition mode and the touchstone charger, something iOS doesn't even come close to supporting. Imaging built-in support for the thing when it is sitting around, not just another clock screensaver. They provided a java based IDE for free, that works in most browsers. They updated the frameworks, Mojo then Enyo, and rewrote their own apps to use them. The base of the OS is Linux, and the apps that work on linux work there right down to a shell. Coding for webOS was a lot easier then iOS.

If webOS failed from HP it wasn't developer support, it was promotion and patience.

Leo is a... if it isn't profitable cut it and move on... kind of guy, Mark Hurd was a... if you want a tech buy it and cut what you have... kind of guy. Neither see the big picture, that promotion, being different and proud of it is what makes a company, not the we have it too. Innovation is what we buy from another company and never take a risk.