HP gives up on webOS and exiting PC Business

Tumultuous times at HP. Just 49 days after releasing the first webOS based tablet, HP announced it is discontinuing its webOS devices. The company now plans to "optimize" the value of webOS after spending nearly $1.2b on Palm, a year back. HP could either sell or license webOS off to other manufacturers or more likely salvage Palm's patent portfolio, in  a time where mobile patents are a premium.

The news was part of a bigger announcement with HP openly declaring its intention to spin off its low margin PC business and focus more on enterprise, software and consulting. HP shares immediately fell 20% wiping 12b of market cap in a single day.


One third of HP's revenue comes from PCs with an operating margin a bit above 5% (2010) compared with 11.7% from its overall operations.

HP seems to be taking a page from rival enterprise giant IBM, which successfully sold its PC arm to Lenovo in 2005, after a period of dismal PC sales.

HP's exit from both PC and mobile segment will definitely hurt competition. With the US and EU heading for another recession, it will be interesting to see how HP rebounds after the spin off. 

Can you predict American Idol Results by looking at the interwebs

I must confess. I am a huge Idol fan. I have diligently followed the last 6 seasons. The show has consistently managed high TRPs, increasing user votes and some really creative product placements (remember the Coke glass on the judge's table and the Ford ad). The talent pool is sometimes underwhelming but the judges and the musical guests more than compensate. 

Recently, another season of Idol ended with Scotty Mcreery and Lauren Alaina reaching the finals. We obviously know who won, but the question is can the results be predicted by looking at the opinions and the trends in the interwebs? So let's find out.

Removing IT Policy from your old office blackberry

Note: The following instructions is for information purpose only. You could be violating your corporate security policies by applying it on your active blackberry

So you have an old decommissioned blackberry, and you would like to use it as a spare phone. Follow the below instructions to set your blackberry "free"

Microsoft's acquisition of Skype, an Analyst's puzzle

Merger economics teaches us that the fair value of a target firm is its market value plus "Synergy".  Last September when eBay sold 65% of its stake in Skype, the internet communication company was valued at $2.75 billion. Adding an additional $1 billion that Skype was planning to raise through an IPO, Skype should have been a $4 billion acquisition. Then why did Microsoft pay $8.5 billion? Is the post-acquisition synergy worth $4.5 billlion!

What's even more bewildering is the fact that last year Skype made a nett loss of $7 million on a total revenue of $860 million.  In Microsoft's defence, Skype is a great company to own. Its user base grew 40% last year and the brand is now synonymous to internet telephony. Microsoft instantly gets access to a web property that's as popular as Google, twitter and Facebook. Integrating Skype into both its consumer and enterprise products should create synergy enhancing online collaboration. Along with its Enterprise communication suite Lync, Skype should also work well with their Xbox and Windows Phone platforms.

From a cashflow perspective, Microsoft has over $50 billion oversees, bringing it back would entail US taxes. And historically Microsoft's reinvestment in internal R&D hasn't had great returns. Thus investing in the Luxembourg based Skype is a smart move. But, only if the price was right.

Whatever be the reasons, a $8.5 billion for Skype still does not make sense. One wonders if Balmer got carried away with his vendetta over Google and their initial bid for Skype.What do you think. Do leave your comments.

What the Flock! Flock Browser finally Shuts down

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this email sitting in my inbox today. Flock was officially being shut down from April 26th 2011. The social interest in the niche browser had been dropping drastically and when Zynga acquired them for their developers in January, the end was almost sealed.

Personally, Flock was a neat idea. You got a firefox build (later chromium), which came with social features right out of the box. Sidebar access to twitter, facebook etc. Seamless access to your delicious bookmarks, email, blogging platforms..

Why did Flock fail? 

The e-Reader Shootout– Kindle3, Nook Color and the iPad

 As a student, I always missed having a digital reader to browse my notes, books and lecture recordings. I spent most of my time lugging my laptop to classes, seminars and library, and typing in notes on google docs or creating my mindmaps. When coupled with Evernote, iPhone became a great recording device. And I scraped my way out of grad school. I spent a lot of time researching on the perfect student companion, but there is none that satisfies all the requirements. The physical paper and pen are hard to substitute.

When it comes to plain simple reading, it's a lot more straightforward. At present, Kindle and lately iPad dominate in this area, followed by Barnes & Noble Nook and the plethora of cheap digital tables.

Sending a mass email to your facebook friend list, the excel-lent way!

Notes: Export contacts from facebook

Facebook is a great tool to connect with people. However, there are times when it get's really frustrating.

The other day, I wanted to drop a mass mail to all my friends in Singapore. So I went to the messaging system, tried to enter "Singapore", hoping facebook would be smart enough to populate the To-List with all my contacts with current city as Singapore.

Alas, it didn't happen. Perhaps I was expecting a lot. So the next thing I did was create a friend list, manually choosing all the people I knew who still lived in Singapore, into it. The exercise took ~5-10 mins with around 200+ friends.

Enabling Remote Desktop server in Windows 7 Home Premium

I recently got a new pc which came preloaded with Windows 7 Home Premium. Microsoft has done some strange things to differentiate their suite of Windows 7 Offerings. One really frustrating feature that is disabled in the Home versions is the ability to run a remote desktop host. i.e, You can act as a client and connect to RDP hosts but you cannot let other RDP clients connect to you. To solve this, I stumbled across a really simple solution.