∞ HP, the new RIM

Written by

Wall Street Journal:

Boast that you’re going to attack Apple’s iPad with your $499 TouchPad. Then dump your TouchPad in a $99 fire sale and announce you’re just not going to offer it anymore.

Telegraph to the world that you are just too dumb to make smartphones.

Raise your financial estimates, twice. Then miss them, twice.

There is a lot of stupid going on at that company these days.


  • Michael Adams

    RIM showed them how it’s done. :)

  • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

    HP’s idiotic mixed-message, incoherent public behavior of late helps me understand how you feel about RIM, Mr. D.

  • Anonymous

    Jim, there is a lot of stupid going on in the whole tech world at the moment.  Companies seems to be playing copy and catchup rather than looking at what made them successful in the first place and then building off that. I’ll give them a hint to get them started again. Many times it wasn’t just the products that made them successful, it was the company culture as well.

  • Anonymous

    Nobody except Apple seems to be treating this like a business. For everyone else it’s like a sporting event, where they have to try desperate moves to “win the game.” Right now it makes no good business sense for anyone to compete with the iPad. It’s too good and too well manufactured. They ought to take a long term view and plan on entering the market when they’re ready and not before. Patience is the best strategy. Concede that they’ve missed out for now and get ready for the future.

    • Anonymous

      Good point. The pressure/incentive that every single financial report should immediately lead to padded bonuses, increased stock prices, and robust dividends has gutted too many businesses already.

  • http://twitter.com/JackRAiNz Ron Jack Rainz

    Didn’t I make that comparison on an earlier thread, Jim? ;)
    (If memory serves me right, it was under the “Stupid HP” thread.)
    Unbelievable… you know that if you or I were to err in such a fashion, 
    we’d be handed a pink slip long ago.Yet Apoetheker, Balsillie and Lazaridis are still being trusted to run these companies, and they will – into the ground. Im not gloating here either, not by a long shot. Because those who will suffer the most from RIM and HP’s slow demise are:
    A)The everyday employees, working people like you and I.
    B)The consumer – us, from a market that will lack in innovation because these companies are failing at challenging the “king of the hill”.

  • http://twitter.com/JackRAiNz Ron Jack Rainz

    Didn’t I make that comparison on an earlier thread, Jim? ;)
    (If memory serves me right, it was under the “Stupid HP” thread.)
    Unbelievable… you know that if you or I were to err in such a fashion, 
    we’d be handed a pink slip long ago.Yet Apoetheker, Balsillie and Lazaridis are still being trusted to run these companies, and they will – into the ground. Im not gloating here either, not by a long shot. Because those who will suffer the most from RIM and HP’s slow demise are:
    A)The everyday employees, working people like you and I.
    B)The consumer – us, from a market that will lack in innovation because these companies are failing at challenging the “king of the hill”.