Comment by lesuorac

Comment by lesuorac 6 days ago

7 replies

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> But here's the final piece of the story: Leo Apotheker was fired on September 22, 2011—just 35 days after shutting down WebOS and eleven months after taking over as CEO. The board finally recognized the systematic thinking errors that had destroyed billions in value, but it was too late for WebOS.

Is this actually the case?

I guess optically it might look bad to undo the WebOS but maybe just announce development of a NetOS which is the same except in name? Definitely people will be upset about the cancelation but retailers still have what 225k units they'd want to move so they can't be that upset about it uncanceled?

mrpippy 6 days ago

The same day they shut down WebOS, all the unsold hardware was cut to fire-sale prices. TouchPad was $99, and they sold out everywhere at that price.

I bought 2 at the time, sold one and used the other for a while. The hardware didn't feel as nice as the iPad 2, but it was serviceable. The software was neat and the card metaphor arguably is still more sensible than iOS/iPadOS of today. I can't see any way that HP could've been more than a distant 3rd place behind iOS/Android, but it would've been fun to see them try.

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hnlmorg 6 days ago

Those units weren’t unsold. They went for ridiculously low prices and everyone went nuts trying to buy one (edit: this isn’t even an exaggeration. People were buying up multiple tablets. Even buying non-discounted tablets then asking for price-matching afterwards)

Ironically this showed that there was demand for webOS. It was just priced wrongly from the outset

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  • giantrobot 6 days ago

    > Ironically this showed that there was demand for webOS. It was just priced wrongly from the outset

    I think the frenzy at the discounted price showed there was demand for a 10" tablet for $99 rather than interest in WebOS. Besides the $499 iPad I don't think there were any other 10" tablets around.

    People like watching TV and movies on tablets. Not everyone has space or wants a bedroom TV. Not everyone wants to watch whatever their partner or roommates are watching on a living room TV.

    A 4:3 ratio screen is also much nicer than a 16:9 ratio screen for reading books and PDFs. An A4/letter paper is closer to 3:4 than 9:16 so it's way easier to read even two column pages without zooming and panning over a single page like you need to do on a 9:16 ratio screen.

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    • hnlmorg 6 days ago

      > I think the frenzy at the discounted price showed there was demand for a 10" tablet for $99 rather than interest in WebOS.

      That’s basically what I meant. Albeit that I was emphasising that people are also happy with something that wasn’t iOS / Android if the price was right.

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      • cwyers 6 days ago

        Right, but HP hadn't figured out how to make and sell profitable $99 10" tablets, they had figured out how to wash their hands of unsold inventory of $500 tablets that people didn't want. They had no moat in selling cheap tablets because as soon as the hardware became affordable enough to do it for a profit anyone else could have too.

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        • hnlmorg 6 days ago

          You say that but HP already have an established and mature supply chain for hardware which, isn’t common. And particularly with portable drives like laptops and PDAs. HP were in better position to capitalise than you claim with your “anyone” comment.

          Their “$500 tablet” could be easily dropped to $100 because it wasn’t a particularly high end device to begin with. I mean, it did have some niceties. But there was also a hell of a lot of corners cut too.

          Ironically, this was the same problem Palm faced with its WebOS phones before they sold to HP. Their phones were nice but they felt far too sluggish and basic considering their price point. I actually wanted a WebOS phone but ended up with Android (likely HTC) because you got so much more for your money.

          Given HP (and Palm) has experience building portable devices like PDAs, there really isn’t any excuse for their failing in price and hardware for the WebOS tablets and phones. They already had experience in this market so should have really known better.

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