They simply had been asleep at the wheel for too long. And even then, the correct move would have been to adopt Android instead of thinking you could build and control your own ecosystem (something they finally did in 2014).
In early 2011 when I told people I had an Android they had no clue what I was talking about. A well done long term investment in other phones could have made a big difference - but HP wasn't willing to make it so we will never know. (Microsoft released their Windows phone in 2012, again killing it before it took off).
> By 2011 Apple had launched iPhone 4s, Android manufacturers had sold 100M phones, and HP's latest and greatest mobile device looked like this
That looks just like a BlackBerry. What's the problem supposed to be? RIM sold 52 million of them that year.
They're much easier to use than modern phones, because you don't need to touch the screen. The only advantage of the full-screen iPhone / Android style is that you have a bigger image when watching videos.
They simply had been asleep at the wheel for too long. And even then, the correct move would have been to adopt Android instead of thinking you could build and control your own ecosystem (something they finally did in 2014).