Hewlett-Packard (HP)'s resounding failure in 2011 with TouchPad and WebOS products is instructive as a lesson in navigating the pitfalls and successes of emerging technologies. Touchpad was intended as serious competition to Apple's iPad mobility platforms but it fell flat because of flawed technological underpinnings of the WebOS operating system. WebOS was the target of HP's $1.2 Billion acquisition of Palm in 2010. Pitched as the "future direction" of improved linkage between Applications and the Internet -- HP bought the pitch and suffered from a flawed analysis of its potential based on poor non-technical management assessment. Some say that WebOS was ahead of it's time, a better concept that failed only in implementation. In truth, there were inherent performance issues in a system that was flawed from the beginning based on the open-systems WebKit. This was compounded by Palm's rush to market that skimped on development of optimized software libraries and tools as building blocks for applications, and a later twice re-working of those building blocks that frustrated third-party development. Poor management, evaluation, and investment of resources by both Palm and HP have resulted in a very expensive acquisition that has fallen flat. The WebOS products direction is all but abandoned now. For more, see WebOS doomed to fail, say former HP and Palm employees
No comments:
Post a Comment