Apotheker
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HP pays $10.4 billion for controlling interest in Autonomy, which will remain autonomous
VoodooPC. 3Com. And, perhaps most notoriously, Palm. The list of HP acquisitions grows by one today, with the purchase of UK information-software maker Autonomy, long a target of former HP chief Léo Apotheker. Apotheker, you may recall, was just ousted in favor of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. The deal began during Apotheker's tenure and went through with HP paying just about $10.4 billion for a controlling percentage of Autonomy stock. The UK firm will remain a separate unit, with Whitman saying, "Autonomy significantly increases our capabilities to manage and extract meaning from that data to drive insight, foresight and better decision making." Something tells us she's not the only one hoping for some better decision making. For full details on HP's latest buy, check the source link.
HP confirms it's in talks about licensing webOS, Samsung tipped as a possibility
HP CEO Leo Apotheker has already indicated that he's totally open to licensing webOS to other companies, and he's now confirmed that HP has, in fact, been in talks with a "number of companies" about that possibility. Not surprisingly, he didn't get much more specific than that, and went some way to dampen expectations a bit, saying that "there is no time pressure to do this." According to Bloomberg, however, "three people with knowledge of the discussions" say that Samsung is one of the companies HP has had talks with, and one said that the company is specifically interested in possibly using webOS for its Galaxy Tab tablets. HP's Jon Rubinstein also dished a bit more on the subject to This is my next, noting that "if someone wants to really invest, and potentially help develop webOS, we're interested in talking to them," although he went on to indicate that HP isn't interested in playing second (or third) fiddle with a company primarily focused on Android or Windows Phone -- it'd seemingly have to be webOS first, but not necessarily webOS exclusively.
HP CEO says company is taking 'too long to get to market' with innovations, we wholeheartedly agree
Leo Apotheker, HP's successor to the infamous Mark Hurd, has sat down for a chat with the Wall Street Journal recently, and while most of it is innocuous corporate-speak -- "we need to fire up our innovation engine" -- there was one quote that piqued our interest. The new chief believes HP needs to get its products to market faster, rejecting Sam Palmisano's suggestion that HP has lost its innovative touch and insisting that his company's weakness has been in just not getting the products out to store shelves quickly enough. Of course, you could say that that's an error HP is repeating again with the launch of its new webOS devices -- the TouchPad, the Pre 3 and the Veer -- none of which are expected to arrive before this spring. However, to be fair to Apotheker, he's still relatively new to the job and these words from him could well signal a change for the better in future product cycles. Full interview at the source.
