It’s easy to sit here and make lots of jokes about HP and their recent drama. The musical CEOs, the abortive interest in selling off their hardware division, and especially their roller coaster ride with webOS. It’s also easy to be upset about their constant failure to make a go of a solid, well-respected operating system. It’s baffling that they haven’t rushed to find a way to leverage the insane amount of mindshare that the recent TouchPad fire sale afforded them.
What it’s not always easy to do is remember that there’s a whole division full of HP employees who now have their professional lives on hold. Yesterday, HP had scheduled a meeting to inform those staffers what their future would be. Unfortunately, the answer was “we don’t know.”
Thanks for nothing!
The Verge reports that HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman has professed uncertainty on how to move forward. Madam Whitman did say they’d be focusing on tablets if they move forward, as phones have complications (ie, agreements with carriers, many of which likely feel burned on webOS already). HP plans to make a decision in the next three to four weeks as to if they want to invest further in webOS, an expensive proposition. One statement attributed to Ms. Whitman really caught my eye though:
“It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision.”
I’m sorry, but screw that. One of webOS’s biggest problems has been a glacial pace. The Pre had a massive buzz when announced, but lost it in the months waiting for actual release. The Pre 2 was completely overshadowed on the day of its launch by the announcement of the Pre 3 “in the coming months” — a sales-cannibalizing announcement of a release that never happened. As for the TouchPad, by the time that was finally released, the hardware was considered woefully out of date by most pundits.
HP is missing the fact that right now, they have a massive footprint of installed users and a grip on the tech media’s gonads. Their release of the Slate 2 last week shows that they have the necessary hardware agreements in place to get things moving. Heck, throw in webOS on the Slate 2 for a start! Take some of those TouchSmart desktops and add a webOS layer. Sell it, license it, or just trash it.
Just do something, HP. Do it now. Even if I hate your move , I’ll respect you for making it.
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