Reports about Best Buy and Walmart returning huge numbers of unsold TouchPad tablets to Hewlett Packard appear to be strikingly true.
Speaking on a conference call right after dropping the bombshell that HP is killing its webOS phones and tablets, HP CEO Leo Apotheker admitted that his company’s iPad competitor is not selling at all, despite hefty price cuts.
The company hoped the TouchPad would quickly establish itself as the number two to the iPad, Apotheker said, but it hasn’t made a dent at all.
“There is a clear movement on the consumer PC space… the tablet effect is real,” he said on an earnings call to Wall Street analysts. “The TouchPad is not gaining enough traction in the marketplace.”
As a result, HP is concentrating on enterprise, while splitting webOS and PC operations, he said.
“Our PC business needs the flexibility to make its own decisions,” Apotheker said.
He expects a spinoff of the PC business will take 12-18 months. In the meantime, it makes no sense to continue selling webOS devices.
“We have been tracking webOS… we were successful at launching the software, but we are exploring options to leverage the software in the future. However, our devices were not successful,” he said.
“About a year ago, we made a bet on webOS. At that time we set clear metrics and milestones to measure success. The sellthough of the TouchPad was not what we expected. Our expectation was to establish TouchPad as the clear number 2 platform in tablets.”
He continued: “It was clear that pricing parity would not generate demand, and we cut prices by $100.”
So HP is cutting its losses, Apotheker said.
“WebOS would require significant investments over the next five years, generating risk without clear rewards.”
A transcript of Apotheker’s comments is here on the This Is My Next liveblog.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
