Some company named Apple has also decided to go
big in the cloud, I hear. Gee, I wonder who will
win that battle.
Giving up WebOS is the stuppidest thing they ever did.
I loved the webOS platform. I'm still using my pre +, but that doesn't make it a right more for HP. I do wish they would have open sourced it. I would like to see it as a desktop os someday.
I do think this guy messed up in handling the marketing of webs, but that is more him trusting advisors. The CEO doesn't do everything, but is responsible for it.
Good luck to him, but I think he is gone too.
Why? At least 3 of the 5 cloud providers you mentioned(Amazon, Apple and MS) use HP servers as a part of their hardware infrastructure. It's not like HP isn't making money from them, and I sincerely doubt that market is going anywhere, considering how many services are moving to cloud-based computing.
Apple is probably more profitable for them. There was an old story that Apple designed their computers using a Cray supercomputer, while Seymour Cray designed his supercomputers on a Mac.
Amazon might not be buying top of the line servers, but they're buying a TON of them, as well as service contracts for all of them. That equals a LOT of money for HP.
Apple is buying DL360 G6 and G7 servers(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/09/apple_maiden_data_ce...), which run anywhere between $2000 and $8000 each. Probably the mid-range models with a decent discount, but again, we're talking a bulk equipment and support contract.