HP Appoints Ex-PalmOne CEO for Personal Systems Group

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=4653' target='_blank'>http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.a...?ContentId=4653</a><br /><br /></div><i>"HP has appointed R. Todd Bradley to serve as executive vice president of its Personal Systems Group (PSG), which includes the company's notebook and desktop PCs, handhelds, monitors, workstations and related support services. Bradley, 46, most recently spent four years at palmOne, Inc., three as president and chief executive officer. His appointment re-establishes PSG as a standalone business, following its combination in January 2005 with the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG)."</i><br /><br />Honestly, I have no clue what this means for HP's handheld lineup, but it's interesting to see that the handheld/personal systems market is this tightly-knit. Anyone want to speculate? ;)

[Beavis]

Sure, I'll speculate.

This guy spent four years at Palm, now Palm is a shadow of its former self.

I'll speculate that he does the same for HP and the iPaqs

[Rod3]

Oh, gosh, don't let him do a LifeDrive thingy at HP! HP is suffering enough!
I had hoped HP could come back strong, but I think it's Dell from now on. IMO, the 4150 was the last really important HP device. The Dell X50V has passed the VGA iPaq in my personal preference list.

[PPCRules]

Well, he's in charge of about everything consumer but printers. If your dire speculations come about, he'll do more than Carly could to run the place down.

On the other hand, since he is in charge of everything, he might not be able to control everything, and someone with a background in handheld devices might be good for the handheld devision. Someone ignorant of such devices (a Steve Jobs type person) might have just closed down handhelds on day one.

[twalk]

Bradley is an operations guy. He wasn't hired for anything he knows about PDAs. (PDAs are such a small part of HP, that the entire division could be closed down and it would take a month before the other parts of HP would even notice.)

Bradley did a good job at Gateway. At P1, he took a company bleeding money like a major wound to the aorta and turned it into a company that makes a small profit. He doesn't know much about customers, product development, and a host of other issues that matter a lot to the people who post here, but he does know how to make an efficient supply chain.

HP is getting him in order to cut costs, and no other reason.

Todd

[whydidnt]

I can only think this is bad new for those of us that love iPAQs. To borrow an old analogy- Bradley was seen fiddling in the town square, as Palm's market share was gobbled up by PocketPC devices. Two of Palm's biggest flops were released under his watchful eye - Who here remembers the i705 or the Tungsten W? Previous to Palm, Bradley was an executive at Gateway another company that watched it market share erode while he was part of their Sr. Management team.

My opinion is that he's a decent operations guy, but doesn't necessarily have the necessary vision to keep a tech company on the leading edge in todays fast changing tech world.

[jimski]

The Dell X50V has passed the VGA iPaq in my personal preference list.

Better bring an extra battery along :roll: before you put your blinker on.

[155]

At P1, he took a company bleeding money like a major wound to the aorta and turned it into a company that makes a small profit.

Did I miss something??? Palmone didn't turn their business around. They bought Handspring and now they are proceeding to muck it up.

Efficiency to PalmOne meant turning out cheap products that didn't compete in the market place. They only recently adopted wifi.

I don't think it is a good sign.

[twalk]

At P1, he took a company bleeding money like a major wound to the aorta and turned it into a company that makes a small profit.

Did I miss something??? Palmone didn't turn their business around. They bought Handspring and now they are proceeding to muck it up.

Efficiency to PalmOne meant turning out cheap products that didn't compete in the market place. They only recently adopted wifi.

I don't think it is a good sign.


Don't assume that I'm saying things that I'm not. I'm not saying that Bradley fixed all of P1's problems. Not even close. He actually let several big problems hang around and get worse.

Like I said, he's a great operations guy. P1 has been reporting small profits off and on for the last 2 years or so. Nearly all of those profits are because of him fixing the supply chain to cut production costs. If P1 hadn't hired someone like him, they would have went under a long time ago just from not being able to keep costs under control.


OTOH, the biggest threat to P1 for the last several years has been cell phones cutting into their low-end portable market. What has P1 done to defend against that? Nothing...

(Sales of cell phones are lately 15%+ higher than expected, P1's sales of low end devices have significantly dropped, and the average sale price for PDAs has skyrocketed above $400. So much for the PPC &lt;-> PalmOS war... ended because someone else decided to crash the party.)


P1 didn't muck up Handspring. The Treo is still the 2nd most popular smart phone available, and it's the most popular smart phone for those who actually buy a smart phone for their PDA features. (Most S60 users have no idea what their phones can do.)

(Wifi was a problem, but probably not in exactly the way you think. Wifi is important in the US market, it's not nearly as important in the rest of the world. 80%+ of PalmOS sales are in the US, so what do they do? Push BT...)

--------

Right now HP needs a good operations person in the worst sort of way, however I'm not sure that making them the CEO is the smartest idea. Unfortunately, Bradley is now a former CEO, so there is no way he would consider taking a lesser post.

No question this guy is definitely better than CF, but he's going to be a caretaker who will depend on others to find the new corporate directions.


Todd

[PPCRules]

So what I condense from this is that in a couple years the guy will have HP "reporting small profits off and on", with a declining market share and products designed and built for low cost, certainly not for innovation ("turning out cheap products that didn't compete in the market place").

All in all, not a good sign for iPaq at all.

And not a good sign for PocketPC in general. If HP stops trying to make a compelling product, everyone else will also. So there will probably never be better products or selection of products than what comes out this fall, the first round of devices with WM'05. Better buy for the long haul.

[twalk]

So what I condense from this is that in a couple years the guy will have HP "reporting small profits off and on", with a declining market share and products designed and built for low cost, certainly not for innovation ("turning out cheap products that didn't compete in the market place").


Ummm... That's not really any different than it is right now, except for the profits part...

HP used to build the best stuff, but now most of it is junk that breaks easy.


All in all, not a good sign for iPaq at all.

And not a good sign for PocketPC in general. If HP stops trying to make a compelling product, everyone else will also. So there will probably never be better products or selection of products than what comes out this fall, the first round of devices with WM'05. Better buy for the long haul.


The "traditional" PDA market is VERY small compared to the nearby competiting markets. With Handheld XP &amp; WM for SP in their sights, it's very unlikely that PPC is in MS's (or HP's, or Dell's) long term plans anyway. These companies are in it for the $$$, and PDAs have had a terrible ROI.


Todd

[Darius Wey]

Oh, gosh, don't let him do a LifeDrive thingy at HP! HP is suffering enough!
I had hoped HP could come back strong, but I think it's Dell from now on. IMO, the 4150 was the last really important HP device. The Dell X50V has passed the VGA iPaq in my personal preference list.

What's a "LifeDrive" thingy? Are you detesting a PDA with an integrated HDD or a PDA with sub-optimal features?

But yes, I do agree that the X50v is one of the better VGA Pocket PCs out there (if you don't mind the 1100mAh battery).