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I Convinced HP's Board to Buy Palm for $1.2B. Then I Watched Them Kill It in 49 Days
(philmckinney.substack.com)
Palm Pre is my Roman Empire.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Technology
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I developed one of the top ten apps in the webOS App Store. I released it about 6 months before they shuttered Palm and started the transition of webOS in to a vague "embedded and mobile things" open source OS that eventually ended up on, primarily, LG televisions.
It was my first big success as a computer science student. When I started working on my next big app idea it was about 80% complete when the new dropped that they were discontinuing all phones and tablets. Palm used to send me free phones and tablets too, and I spent a lot of time in the community forums, I had reviews on webOS Nation, and so on
I maintain to this day that enyo is one of the greatest app development frameworks ever written and I wonder what the landscape of web development would look like today if they'd moved faster to liberate it from mobile devices. The webOS team were also earlier adopters of nodeJS for their native services. It felt like living in the future using them at a time when the iPhone 4 was barely out.
If you can believe it, after that I moved over to Windows Phone, where history repeated without the afterlife. After that, I felt cursed but, honestly, I chose both platforms because the stores weren't saturated with 100 versions of every app imaginable.
They were great times. Five big mobile platforms, free devices, open APIs to work with - it really was a digital gold rush.
I now have LG TVs in every room and it's so strange to use webOS in it's final(?) form. Wonderfully, there's a homebrew community just as there was back in the day, albeit on a much smaller scale. I've even made a wrapper for some home assistant features.
webOS is dead. Long live webOS
You're the goat.
I had a similar story with BlackBerry 10
That was one of the big 5 in my mind. I never did any BB dev, but I remember looking into it at the time. If I couldn't get a device for cheap or free it was inaccessible. Student life is what it is. By the time I made my webOS money they were already on the decline and considering a move to android so I didn't consider it thereon.
Just watched the Jay Bachurel movie recently and can recommend. It's a bit slow but the nostalgia is top grade.
I gotta say, I actually enjoyed the time programming for BlackBerry. It was the only time I actually did C++/Qt professionally. And the APIs were very inspired on the iOS/MacOS ones, so it was kinda easy for me to migrate later to iOS.
But just the same way, the guys in the university lab back then got a few BB10 devices just for sending apps to their app store.
Glen Howerton as Balsilly knocked it out of the park with that performance
That was a good read, thank you
I was an avid Windows Phone user. What app did you develop? I might know it from the 10 that were available.
Nothing well known on WP, and I don't want to give names as it'll dox me given reviews are out there somewhere.
One was a different take on a Twitter app and another was a minimalist Instapaper app. I will say no more!
Unrelated fun story: I rewrote a plugin integration for a WP game from a fairly well known studio, 5 minutes before it was demoed live at GDC in SF, back around 2011 (+-1 year). And it went off without a hitch! Good times
It's amazing how long I can stay pissed about how WebOS was squandered. My Pre had personality; it's the only mobile I actually miss (aside from nostalgia).
My Pre and Kyocera 6035. Never forget.
I never understood how they could choose Apotheker. He was literally fired from SAP in less than a year and yet HP got him as a CEO.
WebOS had its flaws,but it could have made HP market leader - at that time Apple was far from "enterprise ready", Android even less so, so if they had done it right they would have every CIO in their pocket within 4 years.
But of course that doesn't count for the next quarterly shareholder report. And Apotheker had to go "all in" on Software, because that's what he, the salesman he is, sold them.
WebOS was amazing. I was convinced it was the future of mobile computing. iOS was completely proprietary and Android was a dumpster fire. But HP was the worst buyer imaginable. It’s such a shame. What could have been?
I had a similarly high opinion on Meego's future at Nokia and then they suddenly went all-in on Windows Phone.
I also had a somewhat high opinion of Windows Phone before MS killed it.
No one wants to maintain an OS for any less than like 25% of the market — which pretty much only leaves room for Abdroid and iOS... and KaiOS I guess, though I don't know how much effort the put into maintaining that. webOS and Tizen (resting place of Meego) are now pretty much only in TVs.
Tizen (resting place of Meego)
I'd say SailfishOS is the final resting place of MeeGo, especially since it's maintained by ex-Nokia devs.
Nokia didn’t suddenly go all in on Windows Phone, they were bought by Microsoft.
There were only ever like 2 phones that used MeeGo. Nokia primarily used an OS called Symbian before they were bought out.
Nokia switched to Windows Phone in 2011, just before the N9 came out. They weren't bought by MS until 2014.
And yes, I know about Symbian. Meego was their intended replacement for it.
IMO, Nokia's bread and butter was the hardware and the simplicity. The phone apps were just Java.
Sounds like a sex toy!
Counterintuitively, ms phones good reviews were also a good reason for ms to kill it. By the time ms got moving with phones, they were way behind and the market was already consolidating. They had a lot of inertia to overcome. They dumped tons of money into phones, exercised the famous ms marketing arm twisted, pulled out all of their usual tricks … and no one bought them. They ended up with phones that people liked, that got excellent reviews … and no one bought them. Even worse, phones were being sold on the strength of their app stores, and despite sinking tons more money persuading developers to port apps to windows phones, they could never get the critical mass of a sustaining ecosystem. It was pretty clear that even ms would not be able to overcome the consolidation of the market into only two
Loved my windows phone. Lack of apps made me go back to android at the time.
yes! I was just a child/teen when all this unfolded, remember clearly that I wanted to get the Palm smartphone with WebOS but never could as it never reached the stores near me. It was smooth and multitasking so many great UI/UX details.
SAP's annual revenue while Leo served as its CEO was approximately $15 billion. The HP board hired a CEO whose largest organizational experience was running a company smaller than HP's smallest division. Based purely on revenue management experience, Apotheker wouldn't have qualified to be a Executive Vice President at HP, yet the board put him in charge of a $125 billion technology company.
HP's board has done a lot of messed up stuff. I wouldn't touch HP gear with a stick.
He didn't even do a good job in SAP.
HP and Asus taught me that specs aren't all that important sometimes.
During this same period, he became laser-focused on acquiring Autonomy for $10.3 billion—a software company that fit his transformation vision perfectly. Everything else, including breakthrough mobile technology, felt like a distraction from this software-focused strategy. That Autonomy acquisition later required more than an $8 billion write-down,
Apotheker wrote down 9.2 billion in 11 months and that’s just the stuff the article mentions. I can’t achieve that level of failure in a lifetime.
Autonomy was hot garbage while HP owned it. Zero improvements to the product stack. I think the original owners bought it back and pushed out an upgrade that made it 10x better.
Lol, I hope they bought it back for less than they originally sold it for
(This is only tangentially related, sorry for the notification. I just want to complain. I hope you understand)
I bought a used, old HP laptop with a fairly capable AMD apu for some power and cost efficient gaming. Problem is that even though modern games can theoretically run on it at playable frame rates at very low settings, HP does not allow you to change how much RAM is dedicated to the GPU in BIOS. They have a setting, but its locked behind a BIOS only they have access to. Its quite frustrating that I have capable hardware but cannot use it to its full extent because of this software lockout. Knowing that they lock their consumer BIOS' down like this is absolutely keeping me from buying HP basically ever again, because I really want to make the most of my hardware and keep it all alive as long as possible to reduce waste, and they won't let me.
I had an hp laptop with a locked bios and there was a red flathead screw near the ssd that unlocked it.
This is VERY HP and does not surprise me at all. If they don’t know why they’re going down, it’s not because everyone didn’t tell them.
The regular HP printer threads are another example.
I will never forgive Carley Fiorino for killing HP.
That was particularly grisly. It sure went to shit fast, didn’t it.
Up until that point hp had a stellar engineering reputation. They could have milked that for many more years, but it takes real talent to destroy that so quickly and completely
Fires the entire R&D department
Changes the company slogan to "Innovate"
That pissed me off so much back then. I was a big Palm/WebOS fan, having a Treo 600 and 650, then a Pre and a FrankenPre 2 (the Pre 2 didn't come out on Sprint, only Verizon, so I had to buy the Verizon version and swap out the Sprint radio from my Pre 1 and sideload custom OS modules). I also bought the TouchPad on day 1 and loved the shit out of it.
After HP killed WebOS, I sideloaded Android onto the TouchPad and kept using it for a couple more years.
I still have two of the last webos tablets. I wonder if I could load Ubuntu touch on them...
I love hearing these kinds of retellings from industry insiders, I was deep in Tech and high up in the games industry, and I know the kinds of shenanigans that happen at the CEO and board level!
But in my view the mobile game was over already in *2001-2003. That's when Microsoft had everything wrapped up in their hot little hands, but decided that mobile computing was not the future, and that embedded Windows CE on every device is the way to go.
Everything that happened after 2003 to 2005 basically sealed everything in stone. I think he's vastly over playing whatever revolution was in his mind.
I assumed he hadn’t sold his stock because HP paid a dividend (which could’ve been substantial with all his stock from being there so long). But HP doesn’t. 🤷
Sad story of corporate idiocy. All too common.
“If it wasn’t for my medical leave, HP and Apple would be competing for the mobile market!”
It takes a lot of arrogance to be a senior executive; the way he tells the story justifies his position, that’s for sure.
The story doesn't add up.
June 2010 - Acquisition Late June 2011 - medical emergency July 1 2011 - Product launch
He's saying it's a great year of development and integration, then in the one or two weeks he's on bed rest the whole thing falls apart? Come on.
I’ve had two hp laptops and both shit the bed on me within the first year, so I don’t much care for their product philosophy. Vaio’s still my favorite. Despite being made of plastic, the little bugger still survived falling from a moderate height at least 5 times over 10 years. Eventually, the battery died and I couldn’t find a replacement. Rest in peace, you fiery bitch
And I've had two HP laptops work for over 5yrs+ without problem. The only laptop that died in less than a year was a Toshiba.
My company only buys HP laptops, so I've had quite a few. Each one has lasted me longer than the company mandated refresh cycle of 3 years. My last two HP laptops lasted 4 years before I was forced to get new machines. I'm not saying HP is perfect, but anecdotes are only anecdotes.
Only had one Toshiba, and it was put together poorly. Thermal paste was improperly applied and it would simply shut down within 30 minutes. It’s hard to find a faultless brand, but cheap hp laptops are rarely worth the money.
rebuilding battery packs is the new hotness. pop out the dead 18650s and load up some new ones - badda bang
There was nothing wrong with WebOS. HP just didn’t have the cojones to stand behind it.
I still remember picking up a couple TouchPads during the fire sale. That was my first foray into sideloading and retro gaming. Both tablets are now long dead, but we had fun times!