Photo: Jay[N] / Flickr

Greenpeace’s annual ‘Guide to Green Electronics’ ranked the top 15 technology companies in the world on their green policies and practices, as well as on how their products and their inherent manufacturing process impacted the climate. In its 17^th iteration, the report ranked Hewlett-Packard first and some way out in front, with Apple climbing five places to fourth and Research In Motion, a new addition to the list, coming in dead last.

How they ordered up

In order from first to last, were HP, Dell, Nokia, Apple, Philips, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Lenovo, Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, Acer, LGE, Toshiba and RIM. A short blurb accompanied each ranking on Greenpeace’s ‘Guide to Green Electronics’ site, explaining how specific companies ranked where they were and how they could up their performance.

‘Up three places, HP is now the top scoring company – strongest on sustainable operations and energy criteria but could improve on green products criteria,’ Greenpeace writes about HP. On Apple’s movement up five places, the environmental organisation says: ‘Apple is now a joint top scoring company on green products and relatively strong on sustainable operations, but scores poorly on energy.’

As to RIM’s poor showing, Greenpeace says that the company is new to the guide, and as such needs to start doing a better job of reporting and disclosing its environmental performance, when compared to that of other mobile phone makers.

Criteria

Greenpeace says that the aim of the ‘Guide to Green Electronics’ is to ‘Measure and reduce emissions with energy efficiency, renewable energy and energy policy advocacy.’ All of this, of course, would result in products that are less harmful to the environment during their creation period, usage lifecycle, and even once they have been discarded.

Photo: Tom Raftery / Flickr

Hewlett Packard reportedly had a meeting packed with HP and Palm staff yesterday to decide what the future of the HP webOS software division was. By the time the staff meeting ended, the company was no clearer on what to do with its mobile OS platform than prior to the meeting.

The Verge reported on the meeting wherein HP CEO Meg Whitman in a round-about way said the company remained unsure what to do with the software platform. ‘It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,’ Whitman reportedly told her team, saying that a firm decision would be made within the next three to four weeks. Given just yesterday we reported on an HP webOS sale being explored, this is surprising. My guess is that either the company didn’t get a bid worth considering, or that the most likely suitors pulled out of the bidding process.

Doing this in a significant way

Whitman said that whatever the company did decide, the decision would come with a serious commitment. ‘If HP decides [to keep webOS], we’re going to do it in a very significant way over a multi-year period,’ she told her team, before saying that “it’s a very expensive proposition, but HP can make that bet.’

Lots of decisions to be made

HP CEO Meg Whitman reportedly told the team that a decision regarding the future of the HP webOS platform had been delayed so that a decision could be made about the company’s PC unit (they’re keeping it). She admitted that ‘the economics of this business [webOS] are tough,’ hence why the team were not rushing the decision.

Either way, there is only so long Hewlett-Packard can avoid making a firm, final decision. With the hardware business being gone, and an HP webOS sale seemingly no longer on the cards, Whitman’s team is running short of options.

Photo: mbiebusch / Flickr

Hewlett-Packard is reportedly considering a sale of its HP webOS software. After months of uncertainty about what the company would do with the operating system after shuttering the hardware division that was built around the software, it seems the firm may cut its losses with a sale.

Big banks involved

Reuters reports that Bank of America Merrill Lynch is playing an advisory role in the HP webOS sale process. It’s expected the software could fetch for hundreds of millions of dollars, but less than the $1.2 billion the company paid for it through its acquisition of Palm.

In a recent interview, HP CEO Meg Whitman said: ‘The question now before us is what do we do with webOS software and do we come back to market with webOS devices. It obviously will not be the same device but it will be version 2.0.’ It’s pretty obvious a version 2.0 is not happening.

Potential suitors

What’s of particular interest with the HP webOS sale is who the potential suitors are. Reuters reports that Research In Motion and Amazon are interested, which makes sense, considering their play in the mobile devices space. The less expected suitors who are considering acquiring the software are Intel Corp, Oracle Corp and IBM.

When HP’s webOS hardware business was shut down, there was wide speculation that Samsung and HTC, the top two Android vendors, were exploring adopting the software and striking it out on their own. That has not happened, but that would certainly be more interesting than the OS being adapted for the enterprise market or for use outside of mobile devices.

Sad end

Regardless of what happens with the HP webOS sale, it would be, for all intents, a sad end to a very promising mobile OS platform. It’s a pity the hardware it was bundled with didn’t sell as well as Palm initially – and then HP later – would have wanted.

Photo: dfarber / Flickr

Hewlett-Packard chief technology officer Phil McKinney has retired from the company. McKinney, who was one of the most visible HP TouchPad evangelists, leaves the company in a time of great change, following the ousting of CEO Leo Apotheker and up-in-the-air strategic blunders.

What’s next

Insisting that his retirement is not of the traditional idling about variety, McKinney says: ‘My definition of retirement is the freedom to write, speak, mentor, advise and teach without the restrictions of the traditional employee/corporate structure.’

He plans to ‘help innovators get better at innovating’, explaining that he had joined Hewlett Packard with the express plan of being with them for a year or so for this very purpose, but it lasted a little longer than that. ‘That was 9 years ago. I can honestly say they I’ve done everything that is within my power to fulfill that objective,’ he writes.

Why this is a blow for HP

At a superficial level, the loss of Phil McKinney is a blow for Hewlett-Packard at a public relations level. The company is only now recovering from a period of scathing criticism after a string of corporate and strategic hash-ups, and even the smallest crack in the armour will reflect far worse than it really is.

At a deeper level, now former HP CTO Phil McKinney is a highly respected innovator, covered in tech publications and even mainstream tastemakers like Vanity Fair. While he may not have the public profile of some of the more ‘mainstream’ tech leaders, the fact that he ranks so high up Hewlett Packard’s corporate ladder affirms his importance to the company.

He has committed to staying with the company until 31 December 2011 to help the company through his occupational transition, and to fulfill certain client commitments.

Photo: TAKA@P.P.R.S / Flickr

After weeks of speculation, Hewlett-Packard has decided to keep its PC business instead of selling it or spinning it off. The company determined that spinning the PC unit – or Personal Systems Group, as HP calls it – will be too costly, and that the brand value of keeping it outweighed the tedium of working with those razor thin margins.

In the press release, new HP CEO Meg Whitman explained the decision, saying: ‘HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees.’ She continued, saying: ‘HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.’

Value reevaluated

In the press release announcing the decision to keep the division, HP says that they used various analysts to look at what value the HP Personal Systems Group brought to the company, concluding that the brand value alone made it worth keeping, and that the unit played an important relationship in Hewlett-Packard’s supply chain and procurement relationships. Furthermore, the company admitted that spinning it off, rebranding and reincorporating the HP PC unit would be more costly than it would be beneficial.

Margin hurting

Todd Bradley, who is the EVP of the Personal Systems Group was, unsurprisingly, pleased with this decision. He said ‘As part of HP, PSG will continue to give customers and partners the advantages of product innovation and global scale across the industry’s broadest portfolio of PCs, workstations and more.’

Bradley had previously indicated that if the HP PC unit were indeed spun off, he would want to head it up. For new HP CEO Meg Whitman, this is the first high stakes decision she’s made, and though the damage the strategic indecisiveness has had on the company is done, the road to returning HP’s share price to where it previously was has begun.

Photo: HP

While HP has ditched its webOS efforts for smartphones and tablets, the company insisted that it remained committed to the underlying mobile operating system those devices were built on. True to their word, HP is still pushing on with webOS software and hardware – in the form of HP webOS printers.

Print on, then

Pocket-lint reported the news, after an HP spokesperson told the publication that plans to manufacturer printers with the mobile OS embedded were still being pursued. ‘HP is currently investigating using WebOS on its Designjet range of professional printers,’ the computer manufacturer revealed to the publication at the HP Impact event that was held in Dublin

So now what?

Pocket-lint believes that the HP webOS printers are evidence that the company will continue looking at ways of embedding the mobile OS platform into its consumer-grade products, even in the wake of cutting its losses with tablet PCs and smartphones.

Moreover, the publications source revealed that they were unsure if we would see any HP webOS printers or consumer products this year still, but that person did say they were certain we would see something next year.

Mark Hurd was right after all

Late last year former HP CEO Mark told a conference of attendees that the company did not buy Palm to get into the smartphone business. While that statement was met with surprise, it was later revealed what he meant was it wasn’t intended exclusively for smartphones. One can argue that Hurd was right, after all, given how Hewlett-Packard bombed out of the smartphone and tablet business and is rumoured to be keeping its mobile OS alive for the purpose of placing in HP webOS printers.

Strange times

Admittedly, it is very difficult to get excited about printers. And with ongoing talks of a sale of the operating system to numerous potential suitors, taking a wait-and-see approach is probably still best.

Photo: Max Morse / Flickr

Well this didn’t take long. Just yesterday we reported the Hewlett-Packard board of directors was considering firing Leo Apotheker and replacing him with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Well, that’s exactly what has panned out, with Apotheker given the marching orders and Whitman coming as the new HP CEO.

A change of leadership

Chairman Ray Lane will now become HP’s executive chairman, and will be tasked with helping Whitman run the sprawling enterprise, tried to explain that the recent communications errors and Mark Hurd’s firing was not a result of the present Hewlett-Packard board.

He said that: ‘This is not the board that fired Mark Hurd. We are embarrassed about the communication of decisions that could have been done much better. But we carefully considered the decisions made. It is our operating execution that needs to improve.’ While this still feels like throwing Apotheker under the bus as much as it is about the employment of new (and highly capable) HP CEO Meg Whitman, the board remains in the line of fire.

Digging your own grave

While firing Leo Apotheker so soon after hiring them makes the Hewlett-Packard board look just as bad as the now-former HP CEO, there’s argument all parties involved should have seen his dramatic strategy change from a mile away, and that it would not be greeted well at all. After HP’s big strategy change, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote: ‘The thing is, Apotheker’s relevant experience was serving as CEO of SAP. What’s SAP? SAP is an enterprise software and consulting company. Honestly, we all should have seen this coming.’ Gruber continued, saying: ‘You don’t bring in an enterprise consulting guy to turn around a PC and device maker. You bring in an enterprise consulting guy to turn a PC and device maker into an enterprise consulting company.’

To her credit, new HP CEO Meg Whitman explains she is well suited for this job on the grounds that she was deeply involved with buying and interacting with HP’s enterprise business as head of eBay. Either way, the pressure will be piled on immediately for her to make something of the mess Hewlett-Packard has become.

Photo: TAKA@P.P.R.S / Flickr

Newly appointed HP CEO Meg Whitman has had to hit the ground running. One of her first orders of business is to finally make a decision on what is going to happen to the HP PC business, which has been caught in limbo since plans of spinning off or selling the unit completely surfaced. She’s announced that her firm will finally make a decision on what will happen to the unit before the end of the year.

That long to decide

The new HP CEO was speaking on a conference call, following the announcement that she was replacing Leo Apotheker as the company’s leader. Addressing the HP PC business mess, she said: ‘With regard to the potential spin-off of PSG, we’re committed to doing the work right now to determine the best path forward and we expect the board to make a determination by the end of the calendar year if not sooner. This decision is solely based on the value to investors and value to customers.’

Still uneasy about this board

Two things stand out regarding what Whitman said here. The first is how could it possibly take until the end of the year to decide what is best? What would they be researching and investigating that they did not research and investigate when they first announced plans to sell or spin-off the HP PC unit? This decision, all things considered, should be possible within the next week or two, if HP was prudent in the very first place.

Secondly, the Hewlett-Packard board is not looking good here. Not only have they fired a leader they appointed less than a year ago, and are still reeling from loss of investor and customer confidence in their recent hash ups, they now need even more time to decide what they’re going to do about the biggest PC making business in the world? Things will not be easy for new HP CEO Meg Whitman.

Photo: Tom Raftery / Flickr

Hewlett-Packard is rumoured to be looking to replace current CEO Leo Apotheker already. The current HP CEO has been with the company for less than a year, and after the big change of strategy that has rocked the company’s share price and investor confidence in it, he may be out the door soon.

The report

Quentin Hardy, reporting for the New York Times, writes: ‘Less than a year after hiring Léo Apotheker as its chief executive, Hewlett-Packard’s directors were meeting Wednesday to consider replacing him, according to several people with knowledge of the board’s actions. The leading candidate was Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, who was sought for her ability to run a large technology company, they said.’

For a company of HP’s scale, replacing a leader within one year of appointment is all but unheard of – or, more specifically, sign of a hapless board, perhaps.

Hardy’s report continues, with: ‘The surprise move revealed not only the confusion inside the company over its strategy, but also the directors’ difficulties in choosing the leadership of the company.’

It’s the board!

In an unrelated, but equally relevant, post in the Wall Street Journal, Shira Ovide of the Wall Street Journal questions whether Hewlett-Packard has the worst board ever. In it she rattles off the myriad of mistakes the board has made, making a case for it to be concerned worse than even Yahoo’s.

Apotheker making his own bed

The reason the Hewlett-Packard board wants to replace HP CEO Leo Apotheker is down to the negative response on Wall Street regarding the company’s change of direction from an end-to-end hardware and software manufacturer, to just a software firm. This would be achieved through a huge change in strategy that involved all but closing down the HP webOS division, and potentially spinning off the hardware business.

Wall Street has not reacted well to this at all and the Hewlett-Packard board, who no doubt knew about the strategy change before it happened, seemingly want to change face.

It seems HP CEO Leo Apotheker’s days are numbered, and HP’s board could do with a shakeup, too.

Photo: HP

The inevitable HP webOS layoffs have started. Hewlett-Packard’s Palm Division will soon be 500 jobs lighter, following the company’s August announcement that it would kill webOS hardware ops, which made the Palm Pre handsets, as well as the HP webOS tablet PCs.

500 gone

AllThingsD’s sources report that Hewlett-Packard has laid off ‘as many as 525 employees’, a process that got underway this week already. When the publication reached out to the company for comment, HP did confirm that job cuts in the HP webOS division were happening, but declined to say how many people were let go.

Speaking on the HP jobs cut, an HP spokesperson told AllThingsD that ‘As communicated on August 18, HP will discontinue the development of webOS devices within the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2011, which ends Oct 31 2011.’ The individual continued, saying ‘As part of this decision, the webOS GBU is undergoing a reduction in workforce. Today’s actions are part of this initiative.’

What it means

Hewlett-Packard has been under significant criticism for being less than direct about the future of webOS. The spokesperson didn’t help matters, adding that: ‘During this time [they layoff period], we stand by our commitment to our webOS customers and will work to ensure that support and service for customers are not adversely affected. HP is exploring ways to leverage webOS software.’

Leverage the software how, exactly? Outside of selling it – something that seems an on-again off-again possibility – I cannot see HP’s webOS licensing ambitions coming to fruition, especially not after this setback. That isn’t the point of this article, though, and writing about layoffs is never nice. Hopefully those who have lost HP jobs land on their feet soon and everything returns to normal for them and their families.