HP CEO Meg Whitman states that in the coming weeks they will decide whether or not to keep webOS, and that if they do it will be in a big way. But to give you a little excerpt from yesterday’s investor call, below you can see how much money HP lost on the webOS experiment — $3.3 billion when it failed to absorb its fall, and $1.2 billion to buy it in the first place. Ouch.
First, we took a total charge to operating income of $788 million. This was associated with the wind down of our webOS device business. This charge included a net revenue reduction of $142 million related to the sales incentive program, $548 million in costs of sales due to supplier-related obligations and inventory reserves, and $98 million in operating expenses and restructuring charges. Second, as a result of our decision to wind down webOS devices, we have taken an impairment expense of $885 million against the carrying value of goodwill and purchase intangible assets related to the acquisition of Palm.
Via: MarketWire
What’s one of the worst possible days to start a weekend as a CEO of one of the world’s most recongized PC manufacturers? Being Mark Hurd, and resign as CEO OF HP, that’s what. Amid sexual harassment charges and investigation, Mark was replaced by CFO Cathie Lesjak on an interim basis.
According to Monty Wong, vice-president of personal computing systems at HP Taiwan, webOS will be used for HP phones and tablets, but not notebooks. The HP Slate is a tablet, so what gives? WebOS comes to the HP Slate, that’s what. He also pointed out to Digitimes that the Slate will come out before October, and there will be lots of software support at launch. Sounds all in the positive, (except for Steve Ballmer who wanted an iPad competitor) if you ask your 13-year-old tech journalist.
