[eskibars]

I worked at HP when they introduced Instant Ink. This was a natural progression.

But even in 2013, there were managers in power positions that knew and were talking about how much the subscription models were going to hurt their base. But at the same time market dynamics being as they are, everyone also felt the only way to demand multiples for the stock price was to be seen as a software subscription company instead of a hardware company. Otherwise the revenue multiples on the stock were going to go down.

The stock market reaction leads the consumer market reaction, so executives at public companies are generally incentivized to "sell" a vision that sounds good even to investors even if they believe it will long-term hurt the business. That is, unless the executives plan to stay around a long time (another decade+). Modern companies don't reward that long term tenure so that's dissolved and now all these huge public companies have a slew of upper managers that expect to leave before the fires really take hold and make a pretty penny in the process

[pulse7]

This "demand multiples for the stock price" will kill the United States economy - one company at a time: HP, Boeing, and others are going in this direction...