HP threw in the towel

HP threw in the towel too early in the game…

HP today announced that they are essentially killing the WebOS system. Yeah, they state they are still committed to the OS itself, but I don’t think we are going to see much action there in reality. HP has cited that WebOS didn’t meet specific financial targets as the reason it was killed:

In developing its tablet and WebOS division, HP was “shooting for No. 2.”In the tablet market, there’s Apple, and then there’s everyone else. “About a year ago we made a bet on WebOS,” she says. ”We set clear metrics and milestones,” and ultimately, we “have not met our financial targets.”
HP CFO Cathie Lesjak, speaking at the shareholder meeting on 8/18/2011

This isn’t being mentioned here to gloat. While I love my iPad a lot (and am now using an iPad as my exclusive computer), I feel this is a huge loss for our industry. I actually got to play with a pre-release TouchPad, as well as the Palm Pre3 and the Veer. What I saw was the best iPad threat yet. Well made hardware, that felt great in your hand. A responsive interface and OS that was more intuitive than Android (though not quite to where iOS is). But for me, the real magic was that HP was “getting it” with the integration between the two devices. I saw web pages passed back and forth between phone and tablet. Text messages and phone calls could be answered on the TouchPad if your phone wasn’t in reach. Data sync’d between the two without user intervention. It was geek nirvana, but consumer accessible, which most certainly treads deep into “Apple territory”.

While Apple is getting closer to this level of integration with the upcoming iCloud/iMessages feature in iOS 5, it isn’t where HP was in features, and the HP method was even simpler than Apple’s. As a geek, I know I’m not the target demographic for Apple, they want to get the general consumer, and that’s what I love about their products. But what HP had was at that same level. Enough so that I was already thinking about paychecks and if I could manage to add a TouchPad to my gadget stable. As someone with two Apple tattoos, that speaks volumes.

Would HP have dethroned the iPad/iPhone Juggernaut? Not in this year, no. But to paraphrase Marlon Brando, “It coulda been a contender”. If HP really was aiming for No. 2 with this go around, I don’t see why they couldn’t have achieved it in a year or two with maybe one more hardware revision. As I said to my friend Jennifer who was with me at the time I got to play with the WebOS 3 devices, the success of this product was going to be 100% dependant on marketing. Sadly, it wasn’t marketed much at all, and certainly not correctly.

So today HP, after only 49 days of trying, is throwing in the towel. That’s a shame, HP had a great opportunity to put fire to ass and push Android/iOS to work that much harder. Assuming pricing does what I think it will, I think I’m still gonna pick up a TouchPad.