HP's recent decision to shutter their WebOS and tablet division strikes me as extremely short-sighted. Spinning-off the PC busines strikes me a smart move because PCs are on a path to extinction, but HP now has no in-house solutions for Tablets or Mobile phones. In a future dominated by ubiquitous computing and connectivity, having in-house knowledge, platforms, and intellectual property are necessities. HP hasn't moved fast enough to deploy consumer-oriented Internet services (aka Cloud) which might help it maintain long-term market dominance, so having client platforms for cloud services seemed like a real opportunity for long-term advantage. And HP needs to purchase a lot of companies if they hope to compete with software and service giants Oracle and IBM.
Short-term, HP will probably recoup their costs by selling Palm's patents, but it's hard for me to understand how they'll deploy that capital in their existing businesses to better effect than the investment in mobility.
P.S. See Al Lewis' column in WSJ. "H-P's One-Year Plan" highlights all the stuff I forgot. What is going on at HP?
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