Sessions are running way behind schedule at D9. We'll start soon... we hope!
In the meantime, we're going to try and figure out if we'll see a TouchPad demo today. Survey says yes.
But maybe not.
Ah ha!
Here we go!
Leo is out with Walt!
Walt: Has this been a good or bad first months at HP? Leo: Well let me just say that HP is a technology company. It's been great. I enjoy my job, it's an exciting time.
Walt: So HP is a large company. There's a sense that in the tech world large companies aren't nimble enough. You're pretty big. How do you look at that? Your competitors on PCs, phones, etc. are smaller than you. Leo: I don't believe that tech, particularly for enterprise is about problems... it's usually about the integration of a lot of services. Having a broad set of tech to bring together is an advantage.
Leo: When you look at enterprise, those companies are large. Now HP is trying to position itself at the convergence of all these technologies. Massive trends that are impacting this industry. The fact that we have this stuff, that we're trying to frame it together, gives us an advantage.
Walt: So what percentage of your business is big corporations... I have trouble saying enterprise? Leo: Let's say consumer and other... 26% of our business is consumer.
Walt: And yet you're a pretty big consumer brand. Leo: Yes, and we're proud of that. All of the consumer products are driving a change back into the enterprise.
Leo and Walt are talking about giving new IT / enterprise users more consumer facing devices.
Walt: So how do you cope with those new requests? Leo: You don't cope with it, you want to go after it. The trend you described is happening every day, but you have to secure all of this. They don't want corporate secrets leaked. And you have to make sure that all of the data you have is accessible. That brings us to a conversation about a place between that user and the device he uses.
Walt: Well there are VNC tools and... Leo: Most devices can use VNC, but they're not for creating data. We want to create an environment where people can do that in a secure way...
Leo: We would like to help enterprise move these old applications into the new world.
Walt: Let's talk about webOS. HP has been a powerhouse for decades. But you've been primarily hardware. You bought this operating system. I think it's a good OS. But it was in the hands of Palm, who had no money, so you went out and bought it. You have money, you have engineers, retail... the bad news is, you're a giant company... so what are your plans for webOS? It's on phones, it's going to be on tablets. You're now in an Apple like situation. You don't have to license an operating system. You're building a cloud system. It's end to end. Is that what you want?
Leo: Yes. We want to do the same thing for enterprise. But let me give you context about webOS. We bought an outstanding operating system. Probably the best out there today. Built from the ground up to be web connected. All of the integration happens at a web services level. The one thing I regret is that HP didn't take Palm and webOS to market quicker — it would have made my life easier.
Leo: I've tried to shelter Palm from bureaucracy. And we're getting ready to put webOS into primetime. And this is just the beginning. What we want to achieve is this global connectivity. There will be an open marketplace. Platform as a service so devs have tools to create great applications. We want to create this holistic ecosystem around webOS.
Leo: But we'll go beyond that... we'll put it on PCs. Walt: Will it replace Windows? Leo: In the beginning it will go on top of it.
Leo: And it will be on every printer we ship.
How exciting!
Leo: They will become very cool, connected devices.
Uh.
Walt: Leo, I realize you're focused on your enterprise customers... it sounds like you're diverging a lot... you sound a lot like Apple all of a sudden. What's going on? This is a different HP. Leo: I sure hope so. You'll see a different HP over the next three or four years.
Leo wants a webOS world. It doesn't even matter if you're using some non-webOS product for mail.
Walt: So this sounds interesting... how does this sound in Redmond? Leo: You should call Steve, he'll give you a better answer. We're strong partners with Microsoft. Walt: And it doesn't make them nervous that you're now in the OS business. Leo: But we'll still make Windows PCs. The business is changing. The consumer PC business is in a kind of valley, I think it will come out... but the classic world we're all familiar with, the wintel world, is starting to see some competition.
Leo: I think over the next three or four years, these worlds will merge together. We'll see a whole new set of form factors.
Walt: If I'm sitting with an iPad, it can do a lot of things. It doesn't boot up, I'm off and running — I have a sense that people designing laptops are taking lessons from that. Will we see laptops taking cues from that? Leo: You know, I saw someone with an iPad with a keyboard and stand, and I thought why would you do that? If you have a state of the art laptop, it's just as sleek... Walt: You have that coming? Leo: Yes, a whole new refresh. But I think it will be about use cases.
Leo: There are still things you need a PC for. Does it need an Intel chip? Could you do it on an ARM chip? That's something we'll figure out.
Walt: Talk about the landscape. Who are your competitors and what's your sense of them? Leo: Well we compete with a bunch of people. Apple on the consumer side. Epson on printers. IBM on enterprise. We have a whole range. Walt: Is Dell an important competitor? Leo: They're out there in the market.
Walt: Who do you worry about most? Leo: I worry about all of them. Walt: Leo c'mon — who do you worry about the most? Leo: Depends on the day. (someone in crowd yells 'how about today?') Leo: Today? It's a nice day...
He totally dodged that. Fun!
Walt: With mobile... are you fighting for #3, or is this so young that you can... Leo: We think webOS is great and people will adopt it. You can't just take on Apple... it really is an iPad business right now. It's a big growing market, there are many opportunities. First we will become #3, get the users, get the customers, get developers... once we're in the game, then we'll go for the roses.
Walt: Most of these OSs are fairly similar. webOS is really different. Is that an advantage or... it didn't catch on. Leo: Palm didn't have a chance to make that happen. They didn't have the reach or capability. And besides having some great products, couldn't create the quality in the hardware. But it really is a new experience in user friendliness.
Leo: Developers need real estate. We can create a big platform, if you add in printers and PCs, that's 110m devices a year. We think we can get some partners to distribute webOS as well.
Q&A time...
So, we just asked Leo about licensing webOS, and he said that he would not rule out licensing webOS to other phone makers or hardware manufacturers. That is fairly substantial to think about, and it could really put HP in direct competition with Google and Microsoft in a major way. Crazy!
We specifically asked, "Would you limit licenses to certain types of hardware, or if HTC came along and said they wanted to make a webOS phone, would you allow that?" And Leo seemed to indicate they were open to that conversation.
