HP has been restructuring the company in lieu of spinning off its entire PC division and suspending its tablet activities. Its sole tablet in the market is the HP TouchPad which saw hundreds of thousands of units sold, when they dropped the price from $499 to only $99.99. It seems HP is eliminating a ton of jobs due to its suspension of the webOS development team.
HP had originally purchased PALM and its webOS operating system last year for billions of dollars. The company bet on its own disincentive operating system fuelling its line of printers, phones, and tablets. It seems as though HP threw in the towel a little bit early and the company is in disarray. Shareholders are actually filing a class action lawsuit against HP now due to the fact that in restructuring the company is killing the stocks.
All Things D is reporting that HP is future endeavouring close to 525 webOS employees. Almost a hundred staff members were let go today in the Global Business Unit.
In an interview with All Things D, a HP spokesman said “As communicated on August 18, HP will discontinue the development of webOs devices within the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2011, which ends Oct 31 2011.” As part of this decision, the webOS GBU is undergoing a reduction in workforce. Today’s actions are part of this initiative. During this time, we stand by our commitment to our webOS customers and will work to ensure that support and service for customers are not adversely affected. HP is exploring ways to leverage webOS software.”
Things look bleak for webOS since the future is very uncertain. HP is trying to woo other companies into licensing the operating system, but so far there is no takers. They approached Lenovo, Acer, and many others to try and get someone to pick it up.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
