Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the long holiday weekend. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.
"Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!"
-- Reported, quickly deleted Tweet from @rupertmurdoch (The Sydney Morning Herald)
The HP Touchpad: Doomed to fail.
* According to former Palm employees, HP's Touchpad tablet, which the company eventually liquidated last year with a $99 fire sale, didn't have a chance. Leadership and engineering talent was lacking. The company took shortcuts while developing the WebOS operating system in just 9 months. And its WebOS operating system used WebKit, an open-source software engine that some felt wasn't quite ready for prime time, which left WebOS underpowered compared to Apple iOS and Android. (The New York Times)
* How ex-CEO Samuel J. Palmisano turned IBM (IBM) into a company with a market value of $217 million, more than four times HP's. (The New York Times)
* Verizon Wireless (VZ) dropped plans for a $2 surcharge fee after numerous customer complaints and scrutiny from federal regulators. The company had planned to charge customers $2 for making one-time payments by phone or online later this month. (CNNMoney)
* Sales of Sony's new handheld platform, the PlayStation Vita, dropped during its second week in Japan. While it managed to sell over 320,000 units during its first two days available, it only sold some 72,500 units in all of week two, translating to a 78% drop. (PCWorld)
* Android may be "walloping" iOS where market share is concerned, but colleague Phil Elmer-Dewitt argues month-over-month growth is another story, comparing this race to the tortoise and the hare. While Apple's market share has grown slowly but steadily month over month, Google's (GOOG) rate of growth has dropped, from a high of 20% last January to a new low of 1.3%. (Fortune)
* A round-up of the some of the holiday's best retail ads, from the likes of Apple, Wal-Mart, and Target. (All Things D)
* Texting is on the decline in some parts of the world like Finland, Hong Kong, and Australia, likely due to the popularity of Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry Messenger, and iMessage. (The New York Times)
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Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the weekend. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.
"If you don't fail, you haven't tried hard enough."
-- Shervin Pishevar, Menlo Ventures Managing Partner (TechCrunch)
* HP (HPQ) has finally decided the fate of the WebOS operating system, and things are looking up. The company announced that it's making WebOS "open source," allowing developers and other hardware manufacturers to freely MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Dec 12, 2011 3:30 AM ET
Fortune's curated selection of newsworthy tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you every day.
"People like to talk about war. ... Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook." -- Mark Zuckerberg on Charlie Rose (Business Insider)
* Besides appearing on Charlie Rose recently with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg also MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Nov 8, 2011 3:30 AM ET
Fortune's curated selection of newsworthy tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.
* Sources tell All Things D that HP (HPQ) is laying off as many as 525 employees whose work related to (now-defunct) webOS hardware. Indeed, in a statement, HP confirmed layoffs start this week but declined to specify the number. (All Things D)
* As reported yesterday, Google Wallet is now live, MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Sep 20, 2011 3:30 AM ET
No, they don't plan to produce "one last run" in order to make it up in volume
TouchPads quickly sold out at $99. Source: HP
Can you spot the dissemblance in the announcement posted Monday on Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) The Next Bench blog?
Despite announcing an end to manufacturing webOS hardware, we have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand. We don't know exactly when these units will MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 31, 2011 11:51 AM ET
Fortune's curated selection of the weekend's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.
* Hurricane Irene came and went, and while many people felt its potent effects, the hurricane-turned-tropical storm also inspired a number of reactions via Twitter, from criticism of TV news anchors in raincoats when Irene was hundreds of miles away to over-the-top screengrabs taken from the disaster flick, The Day MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Aug 29, 2011 3:30 AM ET
"The tablet effect is real," said HP's CEO, as he killed the TouchPad & orphaned his PCs
Steve Jobs at All Things D8
You don't have to look very hard to find the Apple (AAPL) angle in Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) August surprise: The announcement Thursday that it is pulling the plug on its tablets and smartphones and preparing to abandon the personal computer market altogether.
This is Steve Jobs' post-PC era writ large.
"I'm MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 19, 2011 6:06 AM ET
It didn't help that Best Buy asked it to take back its tablet which was a dud with consumers. But its core businesses aren't doing well either.
FORTUNE -- A report that Best Buy wants Hewlett-Packard to buy back all the TouchPad tablet computers that the retailer is storing, unsold, couldn't have been timed worse. HP is slated to announce its third-quarter results on Thursday, and while the TouchPad makes up only MORE
Aug 18, 2011 11:18 AM ET
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* Best Buy (BBY) is reportedly sitting on a large pile of unsold HP TouchPad tablets -- more than 225,000 -- and the retail chain isn't happy. (All Things D)
* Amazon (AMZN) signed popular self-help guru Timothy Ferriss as part of the company's new bid to publish books as MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Aug 17, 2011 3:45 AM ET
Fortune's curated selection of the weekend's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.
"On the general question of bubble, in the first place you don't know it's a bubble until the bubble ends, by definition. The rule I set for myself 10 years ago was that if the press calls it a bubble then I'd pay attention." -- Eric Schmidt, Google MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Jul 11, 2011 3:30 AM ETEvery morning, discover the companies, deals and trends in tech that are moving markets and making headlines. SUBSCRIBE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
| Nasdaq | 2,933.17 | -15.40 | -0.52% |
| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
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