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by podperson 5514 days ago
Here's my math. It seems to me there are two possibilities:

WebOS fails on the laptop and desktop (e.g. is perceived as crap/bloat-ware or simply ignored). In this case the math doesn't look good.

WebOS succeeds on the laptop and desktop. This means that a whole bunch of users are willing to give up on Windows for their computing needs. Long overdue, since most people's computing needs are met by a web browser and a few other programs you can get for free. If this looks like happening, it's open season on the PC industry business model. Apple has already taken away the high margin market... this will be like a horde of hyenas ripping into a wounded wildebeest. I'm not sure this is actually a better outcome for HP.
2 comments
Duff 5514 days ago
The PC business model is a zombie right now. I work at a joint that rolled out about 12,000 PCs a year, every year. Since 2008? 2,000/year... mostly laptops to folks whose jobs have become more mobile.

ALL of the good customer facing people with companies that peddle PCs in my neck of the woods have either moved on to greener pastures or are holding out for retirement.

My guess is that in 2014, those 6+ year old PCs will start failing and be replaced with tablets for about 60% of the workers. I betcha that the rest will be PCs from no-frills vendors like Asus.

Big enterprises are very conscious of costs, and the "whale" of client-computing costs is that fat Microsoft EA that just gobbles up capital. That's a big cash flow to build a business case for an alternate product.

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podperson 5513 days ago
Exactly. If WebOS "succeeds" on the desktop it will only be because the PC business is done. And in that case, being the world's number one PC vendor isn't very helpful.
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mikecane 5514 days ago
In my reply (pushed down), this is the math I was talking about: HP claims to have 88,000 retail locations

>>>Let’s do some math with that. If every one of those stores sold only one of our products every day during one year, that’d be 365 sales times 88,000 -- or thirty-two million and one-hundred and twenty thousand. Isn’t that incredible? Just one sale per store per day for one year.

I wasn't even getting into the whole desktop thing, just how webOS could like spread big in their tablets, phones, and printers.

(BTW that quote is me writing it the way Todd Bradley should have stated it in his dull presentation.)

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