There was a major announcement from HP as the company made it official that the current batch of WebOS devices will be discontinued. The computer hardware manufacturer also cut down on its outlook for the coming quarters. It was also announced by HP that the acquisition of Autonomy, which is an outfit for enterprise information retrieval, is underway.
The biggest news for everyone, though, was that the company has completely wiped its hands off the mobile platform which it inherited with its purchase of Palm Inc. as it stated that operations on devices based on the platform, specifically the TouchPad and the WebOS smartphones, will be halted. It is widely believed that discontinuing the WebOS unit will cost HP a lot, especially since the company has also decided to spin off its PC manufacturing unit.
HP said in a statement that it will suffer a loss in earnings for the fiscal year 2011 as the company will be involved in restructuring and shutting down of operations related to the WebOS platform. The news of the shutting down of WebOS has come as a surprise for many even as the sales of the devices based on it were quite bleak. The statement which HP issued has now put both customers and shareholders in a complicated situation.
The customers who have already brought the TouchPad tablets are now left wondering what the shutting down or potential sale of that particular brand will mean to them while shareholders now have to consider their future course of action after the company’s spinoff of its PC unit and outlook for future quarters which is lower than expected.
According to HP, its revenue in the third quarter will come to around $31.2 billion, with each share making a profit of 93 cents. Wall Street, on the other hand, had expected the profits per share to be $1.09 with the total revenue coming up to $31.7 billion. It is indicated by the outlook provided by the company that HP is witnessing some material difficulties as it suffers problems in dealing with economic uncertainties compared to its competitors such as Dell.
It was also confirmed by HP that it is in negotiations to buy the UK based software maker named Autonomy. HP said that even though it will discontinue the WebOS phones, it is going to continue to look for more options in order to optimize the utility of the WebOS platform.
