Actually, Michael, I was following this closely on twitter, and I'm sure someone would have pointed those other interviews out if they were done at the same time as the first. Wednesday afternoon was I believe when the initial quote was reported. We didn't get anything else until the following day. There was a good 16-24 hours of silence in between. The initial quote was vague enough to cause concern. Can you blame Palm loyalists who've been through lots of ups and downs and close calls, etc. for becoming concerned that their platform might go away (or might just be pushed into devices they don't have a great interest in)? I think if anything else, it teaches CEO's to not make vague, flippant comments without also laying out what kind of fears those comments are BOUND to unleash. Are folks overly sensitive? Maybe, but given market realities, and the talk of companies buying palm just for their patents, again, how can you blame them?
Part of this also has to do with the EVO coming out (today). Part of it is also that at least for a chunk of Sprint Pre owners (myself included), they've now had the device for a year. With the possibility that HP was going to abandon the phone as a device, I had to seriously think if I wanted to put more time and energy into a platform that might be irrelevant fairly soon. As a developer who's been starting to monkey with creating apps for WebOS, I equally needed to know whether I should stop investing my time and energy. I didn't feel like I was in a tizzy, but rather just in need of good information. When someone makes a statement like the CEO did on Wednesday, it may mean nothing, but it also may mean something significant to a lot of people. I'm glad that HP clarified things within 24 hours, but I also think it's reasonable for people to demand this clarification when their investment is riding on what the real intentions of HP are. Levi Wallach blog: http://twelveblackcodemonkeys.com tweet me @dvdmon (http://twitter.com/dvdmon) On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Michael J. Barnes <[email protected]>wrote: > Boy, everyone got into a tizzy really quickly and seems to have missed the > next two interviews. It seems that the CEO of HP took a cue from the CEO > of BP in his way for words for a bit. > > > > Since he seemed to be doing a round of interviews, there were two more that > cleared things up. Firstly he said HP wasn't dropping smartphones-just > not > focusing on them. > > > > > http://www.precentral.net/ceos-say-darndest-things-smartphones-are-just-anot > her-connected-device-us > > > > Secondly, he pointed out that the smartphone obviously would be a > foundationalpart of mobile connected devices. > > > > > http://www.precentral.net/hp-statement-webos-smartphones-yeah-well-make-thos > e-too > > > > > > It's OK everyone. They're not killing the Pre+ and its descendants. > > > > Michael J Barnes > > > > > > Michael J. Barnes > > Vocalease > > Email: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] > > AIM: atremorer > > YIM: atremorer > > Skype: vocalease.michael > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
