PreCentral: HP PC chief Todd Bradley calls post-PC era claims "just wrong" [irony alert]
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By News Reporter
In the early months of 2011, after the
link hidden, please login to view, , and had been announced at , there were many debates raging inside the halls of the webOS campus in Sunnyvale. Decisions had to be made, projects were going to have to be cut or pushed onto the back burner. Those three devices weren't the only new webOS hardware coming from HP, it was just the first new webOS hardware that was to come from HP. A smaller webOS tablet, , was planned for release a few months after the 9.7-inch TouchPad. A wireless charger was being tested. The next generation of TouchPads was under development, including models that were thinner, had better screens, and more powerful internals. There was even a model equipped with a full-size slide-out keyboard in the labs, though the likelihood of it ever seeing the light of day was questionable. But those were further away, projects planned for a time when webOS was flourishing in the marketplace.
It's still early 2011, and as enthusiastic as HP's leadership was formerly in the form of and still is in the form of Personal System Group (and former Palm CEO) , the crew in Sunnyvale wasn't getting the financial and personnel support needed from HP HQ in Palo Alto to push everything out the door in the quality it needed to be in on the timeframe they wanted to hit. Hurd's replacement, and HP CFO Cathie Lesjak, needed to get webOS running at full steam.
With limited funding available to get the work done, tough decisions have to be made in the webOS Global Business Unit. Sitting after the all-but-done TouchPad Go but before the fancier next-generation TouchPads is a curious webOS smartphone. It shares much of its internals with the HP Pre3 and bears the hallmarks of the clean and simple webOS hardware design language, but it's an entirely different beast.
This is the WindsorNot, the webOS slate smartphone that never was.
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By News Reporter
Today it was revealed that
link hidden, please login to view to be unveiled in the near future and possibly a smartphone for the farther future. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anymore. from CEO Meg Whitman looking to assuage anxious tech nerds about the future of webOS, HP has never shown any real inclination towards producing new webOS hardware since the almost eighteen months ago to the day. Even though it's not a surprise in any sense of the word, it's still frustrating. HP has for close to three years owned one of the most highly-regarded mobile operating systems of the modern age of mobile computing, and for lack of a better term they royally fucked it over under the and . But that's in the past, and while it's hard to deal with old festering wounds like that, dwelling on that past isn't going to help one bit.
There is of course benefit to examining the past with objective eyes, or at least trying to do so. HP bought Palm three years ago for this very reason - to move into mobile. They didn't like the way Microsoft was going with , and though they'd internally , they apparently weren't happy with that either. Driven by Personal Systems Group head and former PalmOne CEO Todd Bradley, so they could chart their own course in the burgeoning mobile world and not be tied to Microsoft or Google or anybody else.
That's how it was supposed to work, and as we all know it didn't. There are a number of factors that can be blamed, from to to underwhelming hardware to disappointing advertising (but far from the worst that webOS has seen over the years). As with every , there are dozens of contributing factors, though it usually boils down to money and .
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By News Reporter
So far, only Microsoft seems to be really interested in Windows RT. Seeming as they're the ones that are making the ARM-compatible version of Windows 8 you'd expect them to be interested, but their OEM partners? Microsoft's decision to go it alone and make their own hardware with the Surface RT tablet could be construed as indicative of the state of Windows RT, but we'll just let HP Executive Vice President and head of the
link hidden, please login to view say it in his own words: "It tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it. I just don't think it's competitive. It's expensive. Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe. If you want to go to any of the 30 Microsoft Stores in the United States to buy one, I think you should probably do that." , coming from the man in charge of the then-Personal Systems Group when it launched the webOS-powered HP TouchPad more than a year ago, didn't sell it very well, and then saw it get . One could say that not only has Bradley soured on mobile-based operating systems (Windows RT can't run traditional Windows apps, while Windows 8 can - yeah, it's poor marketing) and maybe even ARM processors thanks to his experience with the TouchPad, but we'd say that's shortsighted.
, , but as the iPad line and a whole manner of Android-powered tablets have shown, devices with ARM chips at their core aren't a bad concept. In fact, they're a great concept. Considering how late Intel has been to the tablet-ready processors game, right now ARM's pretty much the only concept. So much so that we wouldn't be surprised if in a few years we're talking about ARM chips eating into Intel's stranglehold on the traditional PC computing market.
For their part, , and for Bradley's sake we hope they're not slow and kludgey - expensive wouldn't surprise us, though. And unlike Microsoft's Surface you'll probably be able to buy HP's tablets from the likes of Amazon and Best Buy, though we can't really say that's a better experience than Microsoft's dedicated retail stores.
Oh, and Todd, if you want to show Microsoft what an ARM-powered tablet can do , don't forget what you a while back is still there, waiting for some hardware...
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By News Reporter
Almost exactly a year after
link hidden, please login to view, and an within the webOS Global Business Unit, the Palo Alto technology giant is giving things in the mobile space another go. According to an internal memo obtained by The Verge, the Printing and Personal Systems Group (PPS - the result of the merger of the Personal Systems Group and the Imaging and Printing Group) head Todd Bradley has created a new Mobility Global Business Unit to "reinvest in mobility via dedicated leadership, focused research and development, amazing new products, and a growing suite of applications and services." The new Mobility GBU will be headed by seven-year Nokia veteran executive Alberto Torres, who is joining HP as a Senior Vice President. , however, will stay under the Computing GBU with the notebook team that helped to build it.
What exactly HP intends to do with the Mobility GBU isn't entirely clear, though we have little doubt their focus will be on tablets and not smartphones, and it's all but certain Windows 8 will play a major role going forward. What sort of role webOS will play is a big unknown at this point, though , we can't be certain of anything at this point. The wording of the memo, specifically the word 'reinvest', doesn't exactly have overtones that we find encouraging for webOS with the Mobility GBU.
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