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

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