I have a confession to make: I didn’t cover HP’s highly disappointing earnings statement because I thought you guys might be sick of hearing me go on about them. Considering the recent mismanagement and musical CEO games being played there, it’s not too much of a surprise that earnings are lower than usual but a dip of 44 percent is an almost unfathomable drop for the world’s number one maker of consumer PCs.
I’m mentioning it now because it’s impacting something near and dear to my heart — the webOS group. Looks like someone at HP realized that no0w that webOS is open sourced that they don’t actually need quite so many people. A total so far of 275 people have been told their services will no longer be required at HP. That and the move of the remaining webOS team to a shared HP campus (announced ages ago) make for some extensive cost cutting. Some have commented that this may throw into question HP CEO Meg Whitman’s claims about wanting to get back into tablets one day. That’s not entirely true though. After all, HP already has a division making slate hardware. This is just streamlining, and it’s something HP desperately needs to do after years of empty acquisitions and missteps.
It used to be said that HP could stop making printers tomorrow and stay profitable just via selling ink. Maybe they should start looking into that.
Pink slip image via Shutterstock
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