A Fool Looks Back

Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool
Updated

If you want to read Hewlett-Packard's (NYS: HPQ) Palm, you'd better hurry.

HP announced on Thursday that it will discontinue the TouchPad tablet that it released only last month. There were already rumored reports of unsold HP tablets collecting dust at consumer-electronics stores, and last week's 20% price cut seemed more than just a little desperate.

The future of Palm's webOS is now clearly in doubt. If folks don't want a webOS tablet at $399, will they ever want to tie themselves a webOS smartphone for at least two years? HP is scrapping webOS development -- for now.

Whose idea was it to spend $1 billion on Palm again?

HP is moving on, a point it also hammered home on Thursday when it made a big cloud-based acquisition and revealed plans to spin off its PC business. It's getting so hard to think outside the PC box these days.

Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.

  • Sony (NYS: SNE) became the latest company to make life easier on diehard gamers, shaving $50 off the price of its PS3 consoles. Now if only the games would get cheaper!

  • Sirius XM Radio (NAS: SIRI) is launching an uninhibited matchmaking show that will run live over the next six weeks. That reminds me -- it's now been three summers since Sirius and XM officially hooked up.

  • Tudou (NAS: TUDO) dared to go public this week. Big mistake. The Chinese video-sharing site priced its IPO at $29 on Wednesday, and the stock had already given back nearly a third of its value by Thursday's close.

  • Gamers aren't hitting the strip mall the way they used to. GameStop (NYS: GME) posted disappointing quarterly results, with comparable-store sales plunging 9.1%. Please tell me that I can quit this game without saving.

  • Investor Kirk Kerkorian announced plans to sell 20 million shares of MGM Resorts (NYS: MGM) . I guess you can say he's cashing in a lot of chips.

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

At the time thisarticle was published The Motley Fool owns shares of GameStop. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended writing covered calls in GameStop. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.Longtime Fool contributorRick Munarrizrecommends windshield wiper fluid when trying to look back. He owns no shares in any of the stocks in this story and is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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