These guys are a bunch of clowns, surpassed in incompetence only by Yahoo’s board.Ironfire Capital managing member Eric Jackson • Expressing frustration with the Hewlett-Packard board, which reportedly leaked the news of Leo Apotheker’s ousting, and subsequent replacement with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, hours before the announcement was to be made. Not that Jackson is a big fan of Apotheker or anything. “Apotheker is the worst CEO hire in the last decade,” he says. But the problem is the process that led to his hiring — some messy rumors and an internal investigation led to the board dumping a pretty good CEO, Mark Hurd, and hiring Apotheker without even meeting him — meant that he turned out to be a horrible fit. Whitman at least has a shot at being good at this CEO thing, but the board sounds like the real problem. source (via • follow)
Meg Whitman reportedly on track to become HP’s new CEO: Many people compared Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman during the 2010 election, due to their tech executive backgrounds and their high-profile rookie political campaigns. Soon, they’ll have another reason. source
The speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning. We have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand.A statement from Hewlett-Packard • Revealing that the company’s late-round success with the HP TouchPad was enough that they’re going to produce more of them and sell them at fire-sale prices. Which is hilarious, and tells us all that the decision to stop selling them was perhaps a little too rash. Good work, HP! source (via • follow)
Via @ProducerMatthew: A friend of his, Tim Kerbavaz, successfully ordered a HP Touchpad on Barnes & Noble, only to later receive this message. Alas, it was not meant to be, he explains: “I was hoping, but inside I knew that it was too good to be true….” Also, CDW also reportedly canceled a separate order of his via phone. Oh, HP, you’ve really screwed up this mess.
From the Best Buy sale page:
HP TOUCHPAD CLEARANCE AND RETURN POLICY
Due to HP’s decision to discontinue its TouchPad product, Best Buy® will now provide clearance pricing for all TouchPad 16GB and 32GB models (SKUs 2842056, 2842092) regardless of previously advertised prices or promotions.
Best Buy will not accept customer returns or exchanges on clearance-priced TouchPads bought through any Best Buy channel.
Customers purchasing a TouchPad at clearance pricing will have a 1-year manufacturer’s warranty, fulfilled directly through HP, not Best Buy.
Customers who purchased the 16GB or 32GB TouchPad after June 19 may come into the store to get either a full refund or a refund of the difference between the price they paid and the clearance price.
Quantities are strictly limited. Limit 1 per customer. Best Buy cannot guarantee availability of inventory at this pricing at any particular Best Buy location or channel.
This is a change from yesterday, where we couldn’t even buy one.
Photo: AllThingsD
The AllThingsD crew is having lots of merciless Photoshop fun with HP’s
implosionnew strategic vision
They deserve every bit of this.
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.
» Openly gunning for Apple’s market: The TouchPad, coming out on July 1, doesn’t just share the same cost as the iPad; it’s also the same size, and has many other striking similarities as well. However, what does set it apart is WebOS, which will also make its way to HP laptops eventually. It will be interesting to see how this feature-for-feature cage match pans out.
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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
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