We posted a record four items on Friday on the same company – HP. Indeed we had more quotes in the media in one day than since we started TechMarketView.
Friday also proved an ‘interesting’ day for shareholders in both and HP. Autonomy soared to close at £24.45 – interestingly £1 less than the £25.50 in cash that HP has bid. So maybe there is some fear that the deal will not be completed. Certainly, there seems little chance of a higher counter bid. Every observer seemed to infer that HP had overpaid.
Conversely, HP shares slumped by over 20% on Friday. That means they have more than halved since Leo Apotheker was appointed as CEO. Or, put another way, more than $50b has been written off the value of HP since he arrived.
Finally, in my post HP abandons webOS and the Touchpad
I commented that HP’s UK management had invited me to ‘be educated’ on why the Touchpad was a viable competitor to the iPad. Today I was sent the chart from the WSJ based on research by Richard W Baird & Co in the US. It shows that although the iPad is ‘the #1 tablet in town’ for 94.5% of those surveyed, the Touchpad was #2. Android based tablets were truly also-rans. As the FT said today – HP shares plunge in strategic U-turn – “Mr Apotheker abruptly reversed more than a decade of reasoning by HP that PC sales gave it force in selling to big technology customers. While he said “the tablet effect is real” he culled what some pundits had decreed a worthy contender to Apple’s iPad in the TouchPad.”