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Turning HP into Apple

By: , 7/23/2010 12:51 pm | 10 comments

Apple. Love them or hate them, they have transformed the world of tech. The company, by a lot of standards, is relatively small, and yet they wield incredible influence. For instance, HP makes twice as much revenue as Apple every single month, but Apple actually makes more profit and has a stock of considerably more value than HP.

According to a new article in TechCrunch, HP is seeing green when it comes to the Big Fruit. I am not talking (just) about money here… they are envious of Apple’s persona. Apple is kind of like that jerk in high school. You know the guy… he is a huge jerk to just about everyone, but he is built like a truck, smiles like a Ken doll, and all the girls love him? Yeah… HP wants to be more like that guy (with less jerkiness hopefully).

Apple is viewed as the cool company, while HP is more like the guy with the stapler from Office Space. Sure HP has some cool brands, like Voodoo inspired laptops and such, but overall, they are pretty dumpy.

Enter webOS…

webOS has been hailed by just about everyone as an amazing mobile OS. One that gives iOS a run for its money in all areas, and yet its sales have been poor by just about every standard. However, if you take HP’s hardware prowess, add in webOS and if you squint just right… you can see a much cooler company. In TechCrunch’s words:

From what we’re hearing, HP wants to create a seamless experience for all of their hardware. That’s PCs to notebooks to netbooks to tablets to mobile phones to printers. And they want to do so with a much more controlled product line than they’ve previously had. They want to move towards more premium products, ones with higher margins. That will make the profits go up, just as it has with Apple.

So… can webOS do it? In a word? Maybe. The operating system is really good. Give it some stellar hardware and some marketing muscle and I believe you will have quite a winner on your hands. I think it will take the smartphone (and tablet) world by storm, but do I think it will transform HP into Fonzie? Dunno…

HP has a lot of legacy systems that are simply “uncool” in the minds of the public. Printers… ink… enterprise computers… zzzz. Don’t get me wrong. These are very important products and are needed, but they aren’t cool or sexy. To transform the brand and image of a company like HP will take a lot more than an awesome smartphone, netbook, and tablet. However, if they can get a catchy ad campaign going (on the level of, say, “I’m a Mac” ads), and they can hide all the boring products behind the curtain, then they just might pull it off.

As for me? I am just as giddy buying a interconnected smartphone, printer, netbook, and tablet from Ned Flanders as I am from Danny Zuko…

Source: TechCrunch

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About David Baxter

David is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of webOSroundup. When not toiling away at WOR he is usually with his family, at church, building a website of some kind or another, or playing a video game. @davidbbaxter
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  • Terry

    I think one way is to avoid the HP brand at the surface. They can keep the HP brand for the bland stuff like printers – but ditch it for the slates and smartphones.

    Whether the Palm has the coolness to work – I don't know – not without a redo.

  • Terry

    I think one way is to avoid the HP brand at the surface. They can keep the HP brand for the bland stuff like printers – but ditch it for the slates and smartphones.

    Whether the Palm has the coolness to work – I don't know – not without a redo.

  • http://twitter.com/dsevil @dsevil

    Saw the article title; hoped to see nothing about implementing Apple-like app store policy douchebaggery. Good.

  • http://twitter.com/dsevil @dsevil

    Saw the article title; hoped to see nothing about implementing Apple-like app store policy douchebaggery. Good.

  • Alex

    I think you're right about branding. HP is old… it's corporate, and it's boring. Palm has always had a coolness about it. But with the crap it had been putting out with no software updates that really amounted to anything, relatively boring hardware, and an over-exaggerated price point, Palm had been on the slow move to the grave.

    However, with Rubenstein, webOS, and the newer class of Palm smartphones like the Pre Plus and Pixi, Palm was finally making some strides, big ones at that. It takes a year to build a reputation and a day to blow it. Palm was rebuilding its reputation and respect as a software (first) and then hardware company. They were starting to understand it. It's about the user experience and user interface. They finally had that with webOS and now they just needed to flex their hardware muscle and start putting webOS on relevant, powerful, reliable hardware. Then put some effort behind good marketing, revitalize their brand and showcase their new creations and I know you'd see them come back as a relevant software and hardwar company with the ability to compete with the likes of at least Blackberry and Windows Mobile if not iOS and Android.

    So I think HP needs to continue the trend that Palm was moving in and use Palm as their mobile devices brand and really do it right. Continue to REALLY REFINE webOs reliability, usability, and speed. Then put it on some really good hardware… alla Droid X, iPhone 4, and HTC Incredible. I think you'll see the brand cache come back.

  • Alex

    I think you're right about branding. HP is old… it's corporate, and it's boring. Palm has always had a coolness about it. But with the crap it had been putting out with no software updates that really amounted to anything, relatively boring hardware, and an over-exaggerated price point, Palm had been on the slow move to the grave.

    However, with Rubenstein, webOS, and the newer class of Palm smartphones like the Pre Plus and Pixi, Palm was finally making some strides, big ones at that. It takes a year to build a reputation and a day to blow it. Palm was rebuilding its reputation and respect as a software (first) and then hardware company. They were starting to understand it. It's about the user experience and user interface. They finally had that with webOS and now they just needed to flex their hardware muscle and start putting webOS on relevant, powerful, reliable hardware. Then put some effort behind good marketing, revitalize their brand and showcase their new creations and I know you'd see them come back as a relevant software and hardwar company with the ability to compete with the likes of at least Blackberry and Windows Mobile if not iOS and Android.

    So I think HP needs to continue the trend that Palm was moving in and use Palm as their mobile devices brand and really do it right. Continue to REALLY REFINE webOs reliability, usability, and speed. Then put it on some really good hardware… alla Droid X, iPhone 4, and HTC Incredible. I think you'll see the brand cache come back.

  • Jaron

    My biggest gripe is that in my mind, HP hardware has always equaled crap. Now, before you all jump on me, let me explain! The college I went to had a deal with HP to buy exclusively HP gear. This deal included a *business grade* laptop for every incoming freshman. As a EE student, I quickly got a job at the campus Computer Help Desk and, later, the HP certified repair shop. For 4 years I put up with all of HP's failures – bad memory modules (had to replace the entire SOPHOMORE classes RAM – i.e. HP wouldn't admit to their being an issue till the price of the RAM went down), Hard Drive failures left and right (failed "new" drives – not just the refurbs), motherboards that where so poorly designed that they melted the graphics chip with normal use, BIOS issues where the standby state would keep the HDD spinning (so when students would move their laptop, the HDD head ruined drives!), etc, etc. After seeing the poor quality that HP had, I have yet to buy another HP product again (if that's HP's business line, why would I ever dare use their consumer line?!) and am scared to see what they will do to Palm's hardware. Although, in their "defense" Palm's webOS hardware is nothing near to the build quality of the Treo hardware!

    • BJ S

      the reason you saw all that on hp pcs is as you said, an exclusive hp deal at the school. Take same job at another school, and you see all those problems with all kinds of machines. Many college kids are too drunk, stupid, or irresponsible to be entrusted with serious technology, and I am sure a lot of it was "user error"

  • Jaron

    My biggest gripe is that in my mind, HP hardware has always equaled crap. Now, before you all jump on me, let me explain! The college I went to had a deal with HP to buy exclusively HP gear. This deal included a *business grade* laptop for every incoming freshman. As a EE student, I quickly got a job at the campus Computer Help Desk and, later, the HP certified repair shop. For 4 years I put up with all of HP's failures – bad memory modules (had to replace the entire SOPHOMORE classes RAM – i.e. HP wouldn't admit to their being an issue till the price of the RAM went down), Hard Drive failures left and right (failed "new" drives – not just the refurbs), motherboards that where so poorly designed that they melted the graphics chip with normal use, BIOS issues where the standby state would keep the HDD spinning (so when students would move their laptop, the HDD head ruined drives!), etc, etc. After seeing the poor quality that HP had, I have yet to buy another HP product again (if that's HP's business line, why would I ever dare use their consumer line?!) and am scared to see what they will do to Palm's hardware. Although, in their "defense" Palm's webOS hardware is nothing near to the build quality of the Treo hardware!

    • BJ S

      the reason you saw all that on hp pcs is as you said, an exclusive hp deal at the school. Take same job at another school, and you see all those problems with all kinds of machines. Many college kids are too drunk, stupid, or irresponsible to be entrusted with serious technology, and I am sure a lot of it was "user error"