HP decided to leave the comparatively not profiting consuming and turning to a more profitable market by providing enterprise solutions. It is understandable from the point of view of maximizing profit. But HP made various mistakes making consumer doubts whether management of HP used their brains.
First, HP stopped the production of webOS devices before signing a licensee which will promise to make new webOS devices. This simply scares developers away as there will not make any sense for them to develop for the platform while no one producing new devices. They even has chosen not to talk much about what they want to do with the OS.
Second, they made themselves a bad example for PR. There has been no crisis management and proper internal communication at all. They are providing too little information to the public regarding the change and showing no picture of what HP will become in the future. The PSG is said to be spin off and webOS is going no where.
What made the decision a chaos later on is that HP decided to slash to price of their existing phones and tablets. The discount is ridiculously too deep and hurting real users. The firesale has driven too many people to hunt for the devices allowing people to grab a bunch and resell for a profit while the real users can hardly enjoy the offer.
The chaos doesn’t ended there. Local offices of HP has been making bad decisions to recall the stock of Pre 3′s and TouchPads, throwing to channels which is not proven to be capable to handle it. For example, HP Hong Kong recalled the stock of TouchPad and letting a distributor, MC Founder to sell it on its website (mobicares.com). While such announcement was only made on HP Hong Kong’s facebook page, the firesale offer may have been attracted thousands of people to access the website effectively making the site unreachable for most people until the announcement of sold out is made about 2 hours after the sale began. Disappointed customers later on found a person is posting TouchPad on a forum and selling it for doubled price which drive them outrageous. HP Hong Kong should read the news of firesales in other countries before doing their plans to clear the stocks of TouchPad which may help them avoid a lot of problems.
On the other hand, HP management absolutely underestimated the effect of the firesale at such discount and didn’t consider the feeling of the existing webOS users (or wannabe users).
Clearing stock by providing discounts is good but selling it off for such a unthinkable discount is simply stupid. They are making troubles for themselves, creating disasters and crisis for the company’s image.
As a webOS users, owned a Pre, a Pixi and a Pre 2, I am really disappointed about HP’s decision and how they handled the transition. The sudden change of direction of HP become the biggest disaster and challenge for webOS while HP should have done better to reduce the damage to their corporate image and provide a better roadmap for webOS.
Hopefully, HP can sell its PSG alongside with webOS to someone else (for example Samsung) which can become a better home for webOS. HP is no longer a trustful place for webOS to grow after such big change.
