Dear HP,
It disturbs me to see how things are moving in HP these days. I found it quite haphazard that you decided to kill Touchpad in August and now mull over the fate of WebOS.
You acquired Palm for $1.2 billion and later acquired Autonomy for $11.7, which leads me to believe that you want to go deeper into the software business. I can understand this since IT business is moving more and more towards software.
But why dispose WebOS, if software is what you want to get into? You may argue that the market for tablets (or smartphones) has a lot to do with the ecosystem surrounding it and WebOS is lagging behind IOS and Android.
Instead of selling WebOS, why not spend some money to help with the creation of the ecosystem? Maybe set up a competition or something to get developers interested in WebOS. Maybe $1 millions dollar for the creator of the best app? Crazy you think? Isn’t it crazier to buy something for $1.2 billion and sell it for a few hundred million?
Or maybe hire someone who has expertise in building the ecosystem? Someone from Apple or Google perhaps? I’m sure there are tonnes of ways to tackle the issue about ecosystem. Please lock your strategic marketing team in a room and don’t let them come out until they have some solid ideas.
You have a good customer base (with all the TouchPads sold to-date), good hardware capability and mostly importantly you have the HP brand. Build on it that and start thinking about TouchPad 2 (bring it to market soonest). I see this as an excellent opportunity for you to execute your software strategy.
Nowadays when I see the HP logo – one word comes to mind – confused. Please get your acts together and do the right thing for the company and your customers. I hope you will make the right decision here – keep WebOS!
Yours truly.