Skip to main content

A salute to the sinking ship WebOS

HP the other day shattered everyones dreams of WebOS. In a surprising announcement, HP is discontinuing its Personal Systems group, basically they will stop making all electronics that we consumers buy such as desktops, laptops, WebOS, etc. but they will keep making printers as they make money for the ridiculous price of their ink cartridges.

The dying gasps of WebOS came today as, in Australia the touchpad which only on sale for 4 days was pulled then sold again for 98 bucks. As you would imagine, it sold out in 60 minutes around the country. But what does this mean? Tablets need to be an impulse item? Or was the touchpad just priced incorrectly at $499?

Most people I asked said that they went to buy it because it was $98 and it was a average tablet, this i feel what HP should have done from the start. Lose money in the short term with touchpad though it was pretty crappy hardware with its plasticy finish and slow hardware so i dont how they'd actually lose money but make it up from the apps and the platform of WebOS.

This latest development definitely has apple quaking in their boots, an increases their desire to block any other tablet entering the market, i predict that apples anticompetitive litigation campaign will step up as the holiday season draws near.

Tablet manufacturers (ASUS, Samsung, Acer etc.) listen up and learn from HP's mistakes, the only way that you can differentiate yourselves from the ipad which is a product consumers are willing to pay a premium for is to heavily undercut the ipad in price while retaining all the curent technologies such as tegra 2, usb ports HDMI.

WebOS we hardly knew ye, you were the middle ground between android and iOS. you were clean and easy to use but with powerful features such as multitasking and flash. You never had the muscle behind yourself when you were at palm and HP was just a dud, WebOS we hardly knew ye.

This all said i'm kinda bummed out, but i have hopes for the future please HP licence WebOS or at least sell it to anyone other than apple, someone who will take it on a make it into the platform it should have been so in my mind please let be a HTC or samsung. God we know they make awesome hardware so with WebOS the possibilities are limitless.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

iPad 2 rumours and speculation

What can we expect from the iPad 2, rumors are running rampant of retina displays and camera's, what can we really expect from apple? Leaked case designs have confirmed that the new iPad would probably be thinner than the current generation, we can also expect at the bear minimum a forward facing camera to enable FaceTime, since Steve Jobs promised over 3 million FaceTime capable devices within a year of last July. The inclusion retina display is a bit of a stretch though since the the aspect ratio doesn't allow for the same pixel density of the ipod or iphone. Though we should expect a higher resolution display. What about the processor? well the apple A4 processor is fast and is being used in the ipad, ipod touch and the iphone albeit on different clock speeds, the A4 is a good processor but it seems very 2010ish not 2011. At CES this year we saw the arrival of android tablets Motorola "xoom", Toshiba Tablet, Vizio Tablet, Lg Tablet etc. etc. etc. All these tablets...

Apple fail: Maps

--> New Apple Maps Logo Old Google Maps logo Google maps was brutally axed from the iOS platform during the latest iteration of the operating system, as usual there is huge resistance from iOS users, since google maps was a better option to what is currently being provided by Apple maps. While Apple maps are generally fine, with mapping data provided by tomtom and open street map, they lack street view, public transport locations and accurate POI data. To compensate for this short fall Apple has provided turn-by-turn navigation and unique 3d feature called flyover. while the turn-by-turn navigation is a critical feature which was missing from Apple's mobile platform, I'd much rather have street view than the terrible flyover feature which makes roads and bridges looks like roller-coasters and buildings look like sausages emerging from the earth. Another massive error on Apple's part is the launch of incorrect maps where entire cities are either...

Tablets 2011

At CES 2011 we are seeing that the ipad has left a mark on manufacturers, toshiba, samsung, motorola, & vizio are all now trying to get a slice of the evil cake. Motorola has announced there "xoom" tablet and no its not a typo it is actually spelled with a "x". Even with the dyslexic spelling on paper the "xoom" looks like a solid ipad competitor with dual core processing, 1GB RAM, HD display, HDMI out, 4G compatibility with a software update and Google Android 3.0 honeycomb optimused for tablets this looks like an interesting product. Interestingly Vizo maker of TV's and other things have made a similar tablet, though it has a they have placed a their custom UI and the demo version is like the playbook (just a screen running video's) we can expect that 2011 will be the year of the tablet halle lujah! On the other hand we have seen the announcement of the Samsung sliding PC 7. This is essentially a tablet which slides to expose a keyboard then...