HP: The tablet effect is real

It seems like only yesterday we were learning to appreciate webOS, but already the platform's days are numbered: HP has announced it will be killing off webOS, the TouchPad and its Pre smartphone.

Hewlett-Packard announced yesterday it 'will discontinue operations for webOS devices.'

Part of the reasoning for webOS's demise comes from HP's CEO Leo Apotheker during its earnings call, Tech Crunch reported:

'Consumers are changing the use of their PC. The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations.

'The velocity of change in the personal device marketplace continues to increase as the competitive landscape is growing increasingly more complex especially around the personal computing arena.'

Hewlett-Packard might sound like an unlikely competitor for Apple, but its revenues are actually higher (although the staff number is lower for Apple) and the firm is actually the world's largest PC manufacturer - if you go on units sold.

If anything, the IT giant was in a strong position to take on Apple. WebOS, which was acquired from Palm for $1.2 billion, is a capable platform we would argue is far slicker than Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb. A lack of developer support didn't do it any favours but webOS had a lot going for it.

Upon reflection, with the price drops still fresh in the mind for the TouchPad it seems way too early for HP to be throwing in the towel.

Or is it? HP's other big announcement was the possible acquisition of Autonomy for $10.2 billion, a company that specialises in extracting 'useful information from 'unstructured' sources such as phone-calls, emails and video,' to quote the BBC.

Autonomy was affected by the dot.com technology bubble bursting but it was one of the few ventures that proved profitable and it can boast something most firms would dream of - it has no competitors in most of its business areas.

The biggest crux of the acquisition is what it really means for HP. Its hardware PC market is unlikely to go away any time soon but by Apotheker's own admission tablets are the future and Apple is king. It looks like HP is pushing hard into services in a bid to no longer take on Steve Jobs and company head on, but rather, to futureproof and go down the route of IBM - the IBM that took a step back from hardware, not the other computer giant.

Besides Autonomy, the patent battles going on between Google, Apple, HTC - anyone in mobile, it would seem - indicate just how important owning technologies is. With this in mind, HP buying Palm and its 1,500 patents will at the least prove profitable whether HP decides to sell webOS as a whole or license functions of it.

As for likely licensees, Tech Crunch points out Palm's former CEO, who used to be in charge of Apple's iPod division, is now a board member for Amazon. And Amazon is about to enter the tablet market and take on Apple.

It's too early days to say HP is waving good bye to its PC hardware days and although the iPad and iPad 2 has done massively well, even to the point of cannibalising sales of PC and Macs, computers are here to stay.

We might have seen our first real fatality in the tablet wars and the loss of a platform we saw had great potential, but we doubt it's the end for webOS and it's certainly not the end of HP in computing, as it construed. At best, it highlights the importance of services over hardware.

Goodbye, webOS. As Big Chris would say, 'it's been emotional.'

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