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HP to Discontinue (maybe not) Tablet and Smartphones

post #1 of 37
8/18/11 at 6:37pm
Thread Starter 
500

The big news out of today is Hewlett-Packard will be restructuring "to shut down its tablet and smartphone operations", just weeks after launching their new 4G TouchPad Tablet. The news is somewhat shocking considering HP just last year bought Palm for $1.2 billion and commercials are still running on TV showcasing the TouchPad. HP appears to also be spinning off their PC division in an effort to focus more on what drives the company's revenue; Servers, Services and Printers. Last year CISCO also abandoned their consumer product line Flip Cam less than two years after acquiring the company. The HP and CISCO moves are a black eye for upper management and an overall poor judgment of how not to enter consumer markets.

Full Report coming out of the WSJ
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post #2 of 37
8/19/11 at 3:37am
Good move, following the footstep of IBM - good for consumer overall, not having to worry about too many "diluted" choices winknudge.gif

Let's see who will buy this up and how much royalty HP is willing to accept.

cheers ...
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post #3 of 37
8/19/11 at 3:46am
and it's at the right time for the move anticipation - HP just wrote off $100mio for unsold tablets to resellers.

cheers ...
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post #4 of 37
8/19/11 at 4:59am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post

and it's at the right time for the move anticipation - HP just wrote off $100mio for unsold tablets to resellers.

cheers ...

Meh. I'm surprised they did that so quickly. I would have thought they wanted to get SOME of their money back. Now resellers can charge whatever they want because they don't have to give a piece to HP.
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post #5 of 37
8/19/11 at 5:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve View Post


Meh. I'm surprised they did that so quickly. I would have thought they wanted to get SOME of their money back. Now resellers can charge whatever they want because they don't have to give a piece to HP.

So easy is not laugh4.gif HP just takes back the unsold inventory and cancelling the contract

cheers ...
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post #6 of 37
8/19/11 at 6:34am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post


So easy is not laugh4.gif HP just takes back the unsold inventory and cancelling the contract

cheers ...

Ahhh. But what are they going to do with the unsold tablets??
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post #7 of 37
8/19/11 at 7:40am
Recycle them, wait for re-branding ... No need to let them floating out there with no concrete after-sales support. HP is selling a few models in Europe at the moment with no advertisement, they might hold back a few for warranty purpose

cheers ...
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post #8 of 37
8/19/11 at 1:52pm
Something that's got me rather concerned right now is that I'm an HP Employee. My job hangs in the balance as we are here to service HP desktops/laptops, and occasionally the ProLiant Servers. I guess the one saving grace is that it's a contract with the Federal Gov't and a guarantee of payment to the contract for 5 years. I guess we'll be going back to Dell at that time? They are about the only player left that can support massive amounts of pc's...
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post #9 of 37
8/19/11 at 2:08pm
Welcome to all PC manufacturing in Japan, Taiwan, or China. More likely China.
We'll see if quality goes down.
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post #10 of 37
8/20/11 at 2:19am
This is about time when bean counters listen to engineers/developers ...

"HP’s WebOS team almost certainly had an idea that the company’s new tablet, the TouchPad, had very little chance of challenging Apple’s dominance in the tablet market, as the company’s webOS operating system was running “over twice as fast” on its rival’s iPad 2 tablet"

An extraction from the article above ..

"The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple’s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed." made me wonder if the developers had even the chance to have a testing device for their work laugh4.gif

cheers ...
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post #11 of 37
8/20/11 at 12:21pm
Thread Starter 
So HP is having a firesale selling Touchpads for $99.

I'm gonna pick one up.
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post #12 of 37
8/20/11 at 12:59pm
wow - if I know for sure that something can be done with these later on I would pick one up myself. Can't see spending $99 just for fun smile.gif

cheers ...
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post #13 of 37
8/20/11 at 2:15pm
Thread Starter 
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/product/rts_tablet/rts_tablet/1/storefronts/s/FB355UA%2523ABA?jumpid=in_r11694_webos_tablets_jun11_touchpad16gb
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post #14 of 37
8/20/11 at 10:38pm
Steve, do you think putting Honeycomb on the TouchPad would be worth it or even possible?
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post #15 of 37
8/21/11 at 3:04am
Out of stock - another wow. So tablets must be priced at around 150-200 to attract customers?

cheers ...
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post #16 of 37
8/21/11 at 6:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Firefighter3110 View Post

Steve, do you think putting Honeycomb on the TouchPad would be worth it or even possible?

Some people are teaming up to develop TouchDroid (Android for HP TouchPad) ... so it might be a while yet. Number of buyers stands at around 30K at the moment, so there is a good chance if everyone can donate a few $ to get the thing going, don't leave to just the few enthusiasts to carry the whole cost (storage, valuable personal time etc ...) laughing.gif

cheers ...
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post #17 of 37
8/22/11 at 5:20am
Thread Starter 
Still trying to find one. If anyone comes across one PLEASE POST!
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post #18 of 37
8/22/11 at 5:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve View Post

Still trying to find one. If anyone comes across one PLEASE POST!

Aaaaah .. the joy of feeling optimistic ...




laughing.gif
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post #19 of 37
8/24/11 at 11:53am
Thread Starter 
So it looks like my order went through. $99 Touchpad has been charged to my CC.

Supposed to ship today and arrive next week.
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post #20 of 37
8/24/11 at 1:08pm
Cool - I expect nothing but a good review before and after webOS tme laugh4.gif

cheers ...
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