Hardware

Léo Apotheker in 2008

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The question wasn’t whether Hewlett-Packard would fire CEO Léo Apotheker anymore but when it would officially announce it. Yesterday, in the afternoon, a press release was published in which the company also confirmed his replacement with Meg Whitman, who between 1998 and 2008 has been eBay CEO.

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Confirmation arrived of the acquisition by Google of 1,023 IBM patents. No, it’s not the same story already published a few weeks ago: this is a new acquisition of a nearly equal number of patents and this time there is a complete list. Like a few weeks ago, however, the amount paid by Google remains confidential.

A HP TouchPad with webOS on a Touchstone

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The TouchPad was designed as a high quality product to be a worthy competitor in particular of the iPad but also of Android tablets. However, the TouchPad uses WebOS 3.0 as its operating system. The launch price was in line with its competitors but it was a failure so HP decided to start a fire sale and the tablets got sold out.

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Yesterday Google announced the acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $40 a share which gives a total of $12.5 billion which represents a premium of 63% over the closing price on August 12. The deal includes Motorola Mobility’s 17,000 patents.

The IBM personal computer model 5150

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On August 12, 1981 IBM announced the release of its Personal Computer, identified as model 5150. This expression, as well as microcomputers and home computers, had already been used before so you could say that actually the first personal computer was the Xerox Alto in 1973 or even the Olivetti Programma 101 about a decade earlier. The success of the IBM PC however was such that within a short time the expression personal computers started identifying a model compatible with the IBM one.