It will take up to 12 weeks for HP to make a decision about its PC business.

Just days after HP said it was mulling over plans to spin off its Personal Systems Group and discontinue webOS-based smartphones and tablets, several things happened: the tablets were essentially liquidated at fire sale prices (with another wave to come, strangely enough), the company vowed to support the devices with OS updates despite putting the software on hold, the Pre3 was canceled here in the States but sold at "fire sale" prices overseas with promises of OS updates, and the HP Compaq 8200 Elite AIO PC was launched.



Did you catch that last part? HP launched a new PC although it has no idea what it wants to do with its PC business. Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP's Personal Systems Group, told CNBC on Monday that the company has not made a decision on what it plans to do with its PC business, and may not make a formal decision for another 12 weeks. In the meantime, HP plans to focus on the enterprise sector – including cloud computing – and will resume manufacturing tablets without the webOS software.

That's right: HP is still in the tablet business.

"What we said was we would stop manufacturing webOS devices," he said. "We did not say we would get out of the tablet business, but we would stop that piece of webOS go-to-market activity. WebOS is still a strategically important asset for us. We've seen interest from a number of large parties that are interested in working with us to potentially license webOS. We've always said that we bought Palm for that webOS operating system, and this is part of the strategy playing out."



According to Bradley, HP is looking at a variety of strategic alternatives to ownership of the Personal Systems Group, from spin-off to absolutely nothing. After studying their options for eight to twelve weeks, company officials will sit down with the board, take them through the results and will "make the best decision for shareholders."






HP's recent announcement about spinning off its PC business and canceling webOS-based smartphones and tablets seemed to come out of nowhere. Very little information was released at the time HP made the announcement, and from a distance, it seemed that HP really didn't have a solid plan to follow in regards to releasing information in the coming days. Because of that, various rumors surfaced that included his departure – ridiculous and unfounded as Bradley calls them – which could have been avoided had HP fully disclosed its overall plans from the start.




"My intent is to work through this process with HP," he said. "At the time whatever action is determined, my intent is to lead that. If it stays with HP, I will continue to run it."





Source: Tom's Guide: Your High-Tech Source of Information