Good Morning Mr Husic. You mission, should you choose to accept it...

So. Ed Husic has decided to rattle the cage of the IT industry about pricing discrepancies between the US and Australia.

Congratulations Ed. You scored yourself a cheap headline by calling out the Managing Director of Apple Australia - Tony King.

Having been in the ICT industry for a long time I don’t disagree with Ed that the pricing discrepancies between the US and Australia are inexplicable but, seriously Ed, why didn’t you call out Microsoft, or maybe even Adobe - throw Lenovo in there as well.

Two of these three companies have had Australia grabbing their ankles for a long time and their mysterious pricing policies show much wilder discrepancies than Apple does.

Maybe your aides should do a little more research, because, in all honesty Ed. Going for the cheap headline is what I’ve come to expect from a politician. All sizzle and no sausage.

Maybe, Ed, you should get your staff to look at this article that was in IT News Apple by no means the worst Aussie price gouger, Mr Husic.

It gives a little more insight into the problem, with some numbers. I mean really Ed, if you want to have a really good look at some of this stuff maybe you should look at Adobe, and I don’t think anyone has had a real long hard look at Cisco and their pricing policies?

Really Ed if you wanted to become a hero to millions of consumers and even Australian business you should have a good hard look at Microsoft and Adobe. Get their pricing to look a bit more reasonable and you’d give back to Australian business millions of dollars in money spent on software.

The fact is Ed, while I wish something like this would happen, I doubt it will. The reason I doubt it is that as a politician you’re going to want to raise re-election funds. These guys make political donations and it seems to me that no politicians are left in Australia that have the sausage to match their sizzle.

This’ll be another flash in the pan where you can sit back and say “I raised the issue, but, the others wouldn’t back me up so re-elect me and I’ll maintain the rage. I spoke to Treasury. I spoke to the ACCC and they’re the ones who aren’t doing anything.”

Yeah. Right Ed. The only rage you’ll end up maintaining is if they raise the prices in the members bar.

I’d like to think you’ll prove me wrong, but, somehow I doubt it. If you were serious, I mean really serious, about this maybe you should spend some time talking to people on the ground in the ICT industry rather than using having a sit down with the MD of Apple Australia.

Talk to the guys who have to make IT work in small to medium businesses who run into daily examples of price discrimination in order to keep their businesses running efficiently.

I don’t think you’d do that Ed. There’s no headline in it for you.

Alas poor WebOS we knew thee not at all.

So HP has pulled up stumps, plans to sell off its bat and ball and go back to Palo Alto.

Leo Apotheker has decided that playing in this space is something that HP just can’t do. HP is also going to look at, maybe, getting rid of their PC business.

So lets get this straight, in 2001 HP bought Compaq, who were having indigestion from their acquisition of Digital. A lot of HP shareholders, including Walter Hewlett objected to the purchase and the deal just squeaked through (and there were noises about a bunch of back room deals being done to get it over the line).

Now, ten years later it looks like leaving Compaq alone would have been the smart thing to do.

HP announced that they would be looking at considering “a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction”.

Good move Leo, looks like PSG was your best performing division and sold more units than your nearest competitor, Dell. Lets chalk another one up for management genius in this decision.

Rewind to 2010. HP buys Palm for $1.2 Billion. Why? Because we’ve got to get into the phone, handheld doohickey marketspace.

Today HP announces that “it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

That sound you hear is a billion dollars being flushed down the toilet.

The fact is that margins are being squeezed in the PC business and HP doesn’t want to compete against guys like Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and Toshiba. In the tablet/phone business they just couldn’t make it work, but at least were smart enough to figure they should get out sooner rather than later.

This is telling us that when it comes to Mergers and Acquisitions that are made to gain market share or shut down competitors, it rarely ever works so what does this tell us to expect from the Googorola mutant as time goes by?

Have a look at this piece from The Register - HP chief bows to Jobsian cult.

The interesting part of the discussion is at the end of the article where it quotes Leo saying

"Due to market dynamics, significant competition, and a rapidly changing environment – and this week’s news only reiterates the speed and nature of this change – continuing to execute our current device approach in this marketplace is no longer in the best interest of HP and HP shareholders.

It's not. All those shareholders are wishing they'd bought Apple. The tablet effect is quite real, and it's affecting desktops and notebook sales at Apple too. It's driving them up.”