Selling webOS: The toughest job in the mobile industry

Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC maker, announced yesterday a massive corporate U-turn that involves spinning off its computer-making business, ditching its tablet and phone business, and acquiring Autonomy Corp. in order to sell cloud services to enterprises. The reasons behind HP's dramatic shakeup are relatively straightforward: The PC market is a low-cost, commodity business that is being seceded to Asian manufacturing companies like Lenovo. (Also, as HP CEO Léo Apotheker explained, "the tablet affect is real," which means that Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad is cutting into the business for PC makers.)

And HP's phone and tablet business? "Our webOS devices have not gained enough traction in the marketplace with consumers and we see too long a ramp-up in the market share," explained Apotheker during HP's quarterly conference call yesterday, according to a Morningstar transcript of the event. "Due to market dynamics, significant competition in a rapidly changing environment and this week's news [Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI)] only reiterates the speed and nature of this change."

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