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HP to Spin Off PC Business as Sales Stagnate
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Same, last HP I bought was in 2008. I closed the lid a little too hard one day and the display never came back on. This was after one month of owning it. The quality on HPs were excellent back in the 90s and half way through the 2000s. They did start loading their computers with a bunch of junk software that slowed them down in the 200s. I will miss them.
Guys, PC business is not going anywhere. I love Apple and will be one of those waiting in line for whaever gadget they are releasing, but when it comes to real productivity and enterprise software, PC still owns this market. Which is fine really; PC at work, Mac at home, life is good. Don't mix business and pleasure.
HP might sell its PC business, but there are other companies out there:
Dell
Lenovo
Acer
Asus (The inventors of the Netbook)
Toshiba
HP might sell its PC business, but there are other companies out there:
Dell
Lenovo
Acer
Asus (The inventors of the Netbook)
Toshiba
Apple's prices have come down and they continue to innovate regardless of their meeger market share.
All it takes is for these other companies to start making good hardware/Software.
So HP is following in IBM's footsteps, but HP does not have a bunch of enterprise software products that they sell last I checked. So they would be integrating solutions from others and offering WebOS. I am little lost and baffled here. Can anybody tell me what HP does on the enterprise side beside manufacturing servers?
On the Google/Motorola side I am even more confused. Palm tried to license their OS while competing against those who licensed it and failed. Apple tried to license their OS while competing against those who licensed it and failed. Google is now going to produce hardware running their OS and license it to others whom they will compete against. I guess the "advantage" that Google has here is that unlike Palm and Apple, Google is giving away the software instead of extracting a licensing fee from those competitors/partners [sarcasm
]. So Google can look forward to making $6 per year per user on advertising money that they have to go collect from their advertisers. It seems like a very indirect way to make money -- especially when you are investing $9.5B ($12.5B - $3B Motorola cash). Especially considering that Motorola is going to act as a cost base for Google since they are currently losing money as well (Motorola was actually using that $3B in cash they had to stay afloat, and I am not even sure how much debt Motorola has).
All of these major moves this week are hard to get my head wrapped around. I understand what Apple does.... they build product and they sell product. Apple is focused on their customers (which is probably why iAd is so difficult for them -- since customers don't like ads). Being focused on your customer sometimes makes your partners and competitors very upset (AT&T dropping cheaper text messaging plans). But it makes sense since Apple's customers are who provide the revenue. Apple makes hundreds of dollars of direct revenue per user (per device sold). Even if Google made $10 per user per year, how many years of use can you get out of a device to make that a viable business? They have already invested over $10B in Android development (maybe as much as $20B if you count things like litigation with Oracle).
Maybe HP has decided that the customers who make them money are the enterprise customers and the PC business has become a distraction. Maybe this will be good for them like it was for IBM, but IBM already had lots of software products and servers to sell to the enterprise in addition to building solutions around them at an hourly rate. HP has the servers to sell and the solutions to build, but I don't think they have a whole lot of enterprise software products.
EDIT: Sadly, I don't see HP's enterprise arm making WebOS a top priority -- I see it dying the same death as BeOS.... something that had great potential that never really caught on.
EDIT 2: I am guessing that the acquisition that HP made is where the software products are coming from. This could be a very good move for HP and certainly signals that even the largest PC seller acknowledging Apple's new position in the consumer market.
EDIT 3: As KnightWRX and wegster have pointed out, I have overlooked many of HP's offerings in the systems software space. Most notably HP-UX, VMS and others. Most of their stuff centers around the systems they sell. I was thinking along the lines of application servers (WebLogic, WebSphere, MS Information Server), collaboration (MS Office, Outlook, Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Domino, Symphony), development (MS Visual Studio, IBM Rational tools), databases (Oracle, MSSQL Server, IBM DB2, Informix), content & document management (MS SharePoint, IBM Filenet, Oracle WebCenter), and information analytics (IBM Cognos, Oracle's analytics suite). Clearly MS and IBM have offerings in the systems software space (as does Oracle since the acquisition of Sun) -- but I completely overlooked this. From what wegster pointed out, the acquisition gives HP a foothold in the information/data mining and analytics space.
On the Google/Motorola side I am even more confused. Palm tried to license their OS while competing against those who licensed it and failed. Apple tried to license their OS while competing against those who licensed it and failed. Google is now going to produce hardware running their OS and license it to others whom they will compete against. I guess the "advantage" that Google has here is that unlike Palm and Apple, Google is giving away the software instead of extracting a licensing fee from those competitors/partners [sarcasm
]. So Google can look forward to making $6 per year per user on advertising money that they have to go collect from their advertisers. It seems like a very indirect way to make money -- especially when you are investing $9.5B ($12.5B - $3B Motorola cash). Especially considering that Motorola is going to act as a cost base for Google since they are currently losing money as well (Motorola was actually using that $3B in cash they had to stay afloat, and I am not even sure how much debt Motorola has).All of these major moves this week are hard to get my head wrapped around. I understand what Apple does.... they build product and they sell product. Apple is focused on their customers (which is probably why iAd is so difficult for them -- since customers don't like ads). Being focused on your customer sometimes makes your partners and competitors very upset (AT&T dropping cheaper text messaging plans). But it makes sense since Apple's customers are who provide the revenue. Apple makes hundreds of dollars of direct revenue per user (per device sold). Even if Google made $10 per user per year, how many years of use can you get out of a device to make that a viable business? They have already invested over $10B in Android development (maybe as much as $20B if you count things like litigation with Oracle).
Maybe HP has decided that the customers who make them money are the enterprise customers and the PC business has become a distraction. Maybe this will be good for them like it was for IBM, but IBM already had lots of software products and servers to sell to the enterprise in addition to building solutions around them at an hourly rate. HP has the servers to sell and the solutions to build, but I don't think they have a whole lot of enterprise software products.
EDIT: Sadly, I don't see HP's enterprise arm making WebOS a top priority -- I see it dying the same death as BeOS.... something that had great potential that never really caught on.
EDIT 2: I am guessing that the acquisition that HP made is where the software products are coming from. This could be a very good move for HP and certainly signals that even the largest PC seller acknowledging Apple's new position in the consumer market.
EDIT 3: As KnightWRX and wegster have pointed out, I have overlooked many of HP's offerings in the systems software space. Most notably HP-UX, VMS and others. Most of their stuff centers around the systems they sell. I was thinking along the lines of application servers (WebLogic, WebSphere, MS Information Server), collaboration (MS Office, Outlook, Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Domino, Symphony), development (MS Visual Studio, IBM Rational tools), databases (Oracle, MSSQL Server, IBM DB2, Informix), content & document management (MS SharePoint, IBM Filenet, Oracle WebCenter), and information analytics (IBM Cognos, Oracle's analytics suite). Clearly MS and IBM have offerings in the systems software space (as does Oracle since the acquisition of Sun) -- but I completely overlooked this. From what wegster pointed out, the acquisition gives HP a foothold in the information/data mining and analytics space.
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Seems like the once-beleaguered Apple juggernaut is unstoppable...
HP IS DEAD. AND SO IS GOOGLE. AND MICROSOFT.
Does anyone remember Ms. Fiorina now?
Conclusion: Another one bites the dust.
wow - alot of changes since the signal generator and reverse polish calculator days
wow - looks like aapl has shaken things up in the pc world
what next - dell?
wow - looks like aapl has shaken things up in the pc world
what next - dell?
And the 50 or so people that bought a TouchPad are extending their middle finger and are saying thank you or something like that.
they doing the opposite - they doing what IBM did (services and software no hardware)
HP products are banned from our company because too much time is wasted troubleshooting their crappy hardware.
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And that's why Apple would (hypothetically) buy the HP spin off. Right? Now, I don't think they would do so, since such a business would just wash out Apple's profit margins for little gain (even considering HP could potentially boost Apple's standing with Enterprises).
They are killing their tablets and webOS devices!
Aren't they killing their rack mounted server line too?
And also the printers?
What is left?
Dell should close up shop, sell everything, and "give the money back to the shareholders."
That would seem appropriate since Michael Dell had the same advice for Steve Jobs and Apple back in 1997.
I am completely dumbfounded that HP would abandon webos so soon after purchasing palm. If I were an investor, I would be down right irate for squandering corporate resources and focus.
This spells the doom of the pre and tablet, nobody in their mind would want to spend money on a dead end product with no future. What few developers they have will flee the platform
This spells the doom of the pre and tablet, nobody in their mind would want to spend money on a dead end product with no future. What few developers they have will flee the platform
Gateway is owned by Taiwanese PC Maker, Acer. A shadow of its once self, it is basically a relabeling of Acer stuff.
Such a wasted opportunity to make WebOS into something brilliant. Honestly I really love iOS, and to some extent Android, but WebOS card/multitasking and notification system were trendsetters.
This is sad news day.
This is sad news day.