HP TouchPad Report from Best Buy: “HP doesn’t even want us to sell them AT ALL.” The product display? Still up. However, a guy tried to buy one (it doesn’t seem like he was following the news) and was told he couldn’t. I asked the customer rep and he said they were going straight back to the manufacturer, and that the display, which also included the Pre and Pixi, was about to go down. So, there you go: Best Buy is no longer selling the HP TouchPad in the U.S. EDIT: Neither is Staples, and a second Best Buy location had already taken down their display.
Last week, it was a big deal that the HP Touchpad had its price cut to $399. Now they’re apparently being liquidated. $99 for a nearly-as-good clone of the iPad? Um, you might want to buy this. EDIT: Sold out. Dammit.
justinday said: C’mon. WebOS was never going to win. You knew it. I knew it. We all knew it. It’s an Android-iOS world and that’s all there is to it. The sooner Microsoft wakes up and dumps their sinking ship the better off they’ll be too.
» SFB says: Here’s the thing, though. WebOS didn’t need to “win,” it just needed to do well enough to stay in the race, and then it could’ve spread in interesting directions. WebOS would’ve been an interesting platform to build on — and not just for tablets either. HP wanted to put this thing in stoves! There is a significant embedded systems market out there that could do really cool things with an OS like WebOS. The problem the OS had was not the software; it was the hardware strategy. And the other thing to keep in mind: With Google now the proud owner of Motorola, they may be less likely to share Android’s latest bells and whistles with other hardware-makers. If HP was smart, they’d see this as an opportunity to make an alternative to Android, following the Google model. But something tells me that hasn’t even crossed their minds. — Ernie @ SFB
» Investors were NOT happy with the news: HP fell down to its lowest level in years — a level so low that they last time it was at this nadir, Carly Fiorina had just left the company. We think this should tell HP something — killing off the race horse (WebOS) immediately after it starts the race is terrible business strategy, and investors will not react kindly to this. That was your future, HP, and you blew it because you had no idea how to feasibly make it work.
HP, a storied Silicon Valley icon that dominates the personal computing industry, announced it will discontinue the WebOS-based “TouchPad” tablet computer and phones, which have failed to catch on with consumers.HP spent a ton of money on this thing. And it’s already done. (EDIT: Along with the Pre and their cell-phone business.) That’s it. Big deal. A lot of big news today in HP-land.
They also plan to buy out software maker Autonomy Corp. for $10 billion. This is a big deal because they’re the world’s largest PC maker. So, where does their Palm acquisition fit into all this? (hat tip to @UpfrontNews, which is a pretty stellar breaking news Twitter feed)
» A leaked memo from the CEO is to blame: The memo by Leo Apotheker caused the company’s stocks to fall. He cited the Japanese earthquake and weak PC sales as reasons to reduce hiring and prepare for another rough quarter. Even though their stocks are up from last year, they aren’t meeting market predictions, causing people to sell their shares in the company. Apparently, it’s causing the stock market to slow down overall. Yikes.
Need any more proof Windows will die someday? Well, here you go. Starting in 2012, HP will start offering WebOS on its PCs, allowing users to choose between Windows and the Web-oriented operating system. This is a huge step, because it means two major companies – Google and HP – are pushing away from the traditional Windows model. But HP’s corner-stoned on the model, so it’s even bigger than Google’s Chrome OS. This is huge. source
Today’s big winner? HP. Specifically its Palm unit. Today, they revealed a bunch of awesome WebOS products that could potentially get the also-ran back in the game. Above is a feature that the iPad can’t do with the iPhone, to the point that it created a whole cottage industry of apps (Instapaper, Read it Later) to make it happen. But the TouchPad can do this with a Pre, the Pixi, or the new baby brother, the Veer. If the iPhone or the Android were able to do this, it’d be a real game-changer. And reportedly HP is working on WebOS PCs, which would effectively be a more robust version of Google’s Chrome OS. So, yeah, this is a pretty stacked lineup, kids. The only real question we have: How much does this stuff all cost? source
This is the new HP tablet: The HP “TouchPad” will run Web OS, a Palm operating system, and will be offered in 16GB and 32GB versions. HP is marketing “true multitasking” and the ability to run Flash in an effort to compete against Apple. The tablet sports a forward-facing 1.3-megapixel camera and Beats Audio high-fidelity speakers. Availability: Sometime this summer. Read more…
This is the first real competition to the iPad we’ve seen. Look at this thing. It’s awesome.
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Oracle’s Larry Ellison really dislikes HP, apparently. First, he swiped their former chief executive, who was not only good at his job, but was removed for fairly questionable reasons. (HP didn’t like that, by the way.) Now, Ellison’s company has their sights set on their new CEO, Leo Apotheker, the weirdly hired former SAP CEO. See, a subsidiary of SAP, TomorrowNow, reportedly engaged in software theft from Oracle. Oracle thinks SAP owes them billions of dollars; SAP claims it’s closer to tens of millions. Either way, Oracle has hired a private investigator to find Apotheker after HP would not accept Oracle’s subpoena for Apotheker to testify in court about the case (and Apotheker skipped an earlier trial). In other news, Silicon Valley business is pretty cutthroat. (Above: Artist’s depiction of what we think the private investigator looks like.) source
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