[DISCUSSION] Losing $207 a Pop, HP brings back it's iPad rival, The Touchpad

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Check it here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...&postcount=685

Originally Posted by thuddome

Check it here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...&postcount=685

The soap opera continues.... I've seen a lot of stories with different takes on this. Officially, I believe they're saying they are just producing another run mainly to fulfill outstanding orders. Apparently (read: "refreshingly") they still care about their company image. In my short time with WebOS, I've come to become quite enamored with it. I hope it and the Touchpad live on. Heck, it just skyrocketed in marketshare!

Man the big deal that's being made about this by people who don't understand how manufacturing works is just mind boggling.

They had a TON of parts sitting around and a production line sitting idle. All they did was decide that they would build out quantities to use up the remaining parts that they had on hand. These parts were ordered probably two or more years in advance of need. Their possible decisions were, throw the parts in a landfill, try to resell them, or use them as originally intended. Choice three is the lowest effort and lowest risk with a guaranteed return, so, done. Simple.

HP is going to have to pay for all those touchpads anyway. They most likely have a contract with the parts and mfg companies for XXX amount of tablets. They could either stop production and pay the parts/mfg companies anyway due to contract obligations or they build and sell what was already in the que. Yes it will be at a loss but only 2/3 of that loss. They could lose 3/3. So, selling what they can is the best move for them and for us. The more TP's sold to geeks, the stronger the dev community and the higher chance a larger player will jump in and take over the hardware and OS.

Originally Posted by phobos512

Man the big deal that's being made about this by people who don't understand how manufacturing works is just mind boggling.

They had a TON of parts sitting around and a production line sitting idle. All they did was decide that they would build out quantities to use up the remaining parts that they had on hand. These parts were ordered probably two or more years in advance of need. Their possible decisions were, throw the parts in a landfill, try to resell them, or use them as originally intended. Choice three is the lowest effort and lowest risk with a guaranteed return, so, done. Simple.

^This.


/thread

Rumor is that Samsung has already made a bid to buy webOS.

Originally Posted by thuddome

Rumor is that Samsung has already made a bid to buy webOS.

The problem is,WebOS is pretty much dead. Developers are not going to want to learn it. Think about it,if you have a choice of what to learn,you MIGHT have chosen WebOS before but now you just wont,you will learn to develop for Android or iOS. In fact,if you DO develop for WebOS ,I bet your seriously looking into iOS now,or android and I cant imagine your goign to go back and waste your time. Remember,these guys are doing this to pay their rent and put food on their table,not just to play around. Once HP abandoned it,it has that stigma associated with it and people are going to see it as a losing bet.

Hp threw a billion dollars away on Palm to get WebOS and there is no way they can get most of it back. What they SHOULD have done was drop the price of the tablet until it sold,and talk up their future plans while looking for someone to take it off their hands.

Essentially,its like they had a horse. It was having some health problems and they realized they just didnt want it any more. As such their options were,find someone else to take it off their hands or just shoot it and be done with it. What happened was they got it backwards. They shot the horse,now they are going around asking if anyone wants to take it off their hands.

the average cost of a Superbowl commercial is 3 million dollars for 30 seconds. So lost money from HP really dosent matter. To me, this was all a publicity stunt. And i'm happy, because i got a 150 dollar dual core tablet with 32GB of memory that is about to be ported to android..

Originally Posted by pflatlyne

The problem is,WebOS is pretty much dead. Developers are not going to want to learn it. Think about it,if you have a choice of what to learn,you MIGHT have chosen WebOS before but now you just wont,you will learn to develop for Android or iOS. In fact,if you DO develop for WebOS ,I bet your seriously looking into iOS now,or android and I cant imagine your goign to go back and waste your time. Remember,these guys are doing this to pay their rent and put food on their table,not just to play around. Once HP abandoned it,it has that stigma associated with it and people are going to see it as a losing bet.

Hp threw a billion dollars away on Palm to get WebOS and there is no way they can get most of it back. What they SHOULD have done was drop the price of the tablet until it sold,and talk up their future plans while looking for someone to take it off their hands.

Essentially,its like they had a horse. It was having some health problems and they realized they just didnt want it any more. As such their options were,find someone else to take it off their hands or just shoot it and be done with it. What happened was they got it backwards. They shot the horse,now they are going around asking if anyone wants to take it off their hands.

Very good analogy. The only way I could see Samsung biting on a WebOS deal is if they could somehow work it similarish to how Blackberry is trying to do it, and have Android apps run on top of WebOS. WebOS would be their hedge against a Google/Motorola partnership, although doing it this way wouldn't be that good of a hedge because there still wouldn't be any native WebOS apps if in fact Samsung had to break away from Google/Android.

Originally Posted by pflatlyne

The problem is,WebOS is pretty much dead. Developers are not going to want to learn it. Think about it,if you have a choice of what to learn,you MIGHT have chosen WebOS before but now you just wont,you will learn to develop for Android or iOS. In fact,if you DO develop for WebOS ,I bet your seriously looking into iOS now,or android and I cant imagine your goign to go back and waste your time. Remember,these guys are doing this to pay their rent and put food on their table,not just to play around. Once HP abandoned it,it has that stigma associated with it and people are going to see it as a losing bet.

Hp threw a billion dollars away on Palm to get WebOS and there is no way they can get most of it back. What they SHOULD have done was drop the price of the tablet until it sold,and talk up their future plans while looking for someone to take it off their hands.

Essentially,its like they had a horse. It was having some health problems and they realized they just didnt want it any more. As such their options were,find someone else to take it off their hands or just shoot it and be done with it. What happened was they got it backwards. They shot the horse,now they are going around asking if anyone wants to take it off their hands.

Source - http://allthingsd.com/20110829/samsung-eyeing-webos/

webOS will still be supported (According to HP) and patched and also the Palm Pre3 is coming with it on it. With Google making the Motorola deal it makes total sense for Samsung to acquire webOS. And you are right, HP spent $1.2 billion on Palm, you think they are just going to lay everyone off and dissolve the company? Sell it, make some cash. I listen to Wall Street which is usually right about these things because there's money involved. I am with everyone else, I got a TouchPad which works fine for $149. I could care less if anyone ever develops anything for it, it does pretty much everything right now, pretty well. If Android ports to it I will go there but for $149 it was less than my phone.

This entire TouchPad story is the biggest publicity that HP has had in 20 years. With HP in a tailspin, who knows what will happen. On WSJ.com read the article "HP's One Year Plan". That pretty much explains it. If I hear of TouchPads popping up I will report them here. I hope all XDA folks can get one, it's a great deal.