HP says they're getting ready to spin off or sell their PC division. According to this article that would be mean the new company or the acquiring company would:
- Be the #1 PC manufacturer
- Be the #2 tablet manufacturer
- Have a 1 million installed base for WebOS
- Have taken 1 million customers away from their competitors who at least in the Android space seem to be struggling a bit
That's a pretty compelling story especially if this new entity can capitalize on it with more management and sales autonomy, focus, and agility. I'm not saying everything about this strategic change is pretty, but I'd wait before calling this a failure.
I completely agree with all of your points, and I think that a lot of people are missing the point of just how disruptive HP have been in all of this, in terms of mopping up tablet users with the cheap Touchpad who would have otherwise opted to buy a cheap Android tablet. Amazon for one, must be furious with HP given that this fire-sale happened on the eve of their $250 tablet launch, especially given that the Touchpad makes a sweet Kindle device.
It will be very interesting to see what happens with this spin-off entity, and indeed, what it will be called (anyone taking bets on Compaq or Palm making a come back)?
The processor was not below par. It's perfectly fine. The perceived slowness came from insufficient GPU acceleration as well as a buggy initial release.
However, you are right in that HP was not commited to webOS. Then again, look at HP's stock price since Leo's announcement.
The market is not pleased and I doubt it will be with all this waffling.
Its processor is somewhat underpowered when compared to iPad 2's (ARM7 vs. ARM9 cores). The perceived slowness, short battery life and various other problems were could also be blamed on it being released before it was ready. The hardware side being ready (sort of - the machines should be faster) before the software shows poor management.
Where are you getting your information from that they are "ARM7" cores? I think you are getting confused so please do not go off spouting about (ARM7 vs. ARM9 cores).
ARMv7 is Cortex of which there have been Cortex A8 (single core) and A9 (dual core). There's also A15 coming down the pike.
The processor in the TouchPad is a Qualcomm dual core APQ8060 clocked at either 1.2 or 1.5GHz. It is very much the current state of the art for tablets. And given that they have been overclocked to as high as 1.9GHz certainly means that the processor itself is no slouch.
Now, once again, what runs on top is a whole different story.
Again, re your statement about short battery life, I would love to see a proper reference. Stock, out the box: "The battery life is estimated at nine hours by HP; in a review by Engadget, the battery lasted for about eight and a half hours". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_TouchPad
Modified with appropriate patches, it should and will last longer than said 8 1/2 hours. I find it tough to believe anyone that would quantify a device capable of lasting over 8hrs (of use) as having a "short" battery life.
Now the product being released before it was ready, that's a problem. However, there have been rumors that the release date was forced upon the Palm GBU without regard for product readiness. The 3.0.2 release brought much improved stability so that really should have been the proper baseline release.
That said, this is all kind of moot since HP and Leo seem keen on stumbling around like a drunk bull in a china shop. The sequence of events since the announcement certainly give off the impression that HP is not on the ball here and the stock price certainly reflects that. In 10 days, it would be a month since HP made the announcement and the stock has been flat after the massive drop the day after giving credence to fact that the market has no faith in where HP is headed.
I guess you are correct. I am not sure where I got the CPU information (I was at the office and I can't get my browsing history from here) but your reference seems sound. I also remember reports of WebOS running much faster on Apple's iPad 2 (under mobile Safari) that may hint at some other hardware performance bottleneck.
As for battery life, it was mentioned in BYTE's podcast. IIRC, the reviewers were quite unhappy with both the software stability (frequent reboots) and with the short (according to them) battery life.
I am equally sorry about HP's current directions. It's clear that given a little more time, their tablet would become a solid offering and a very attractive third option. But not at iPad prices.
In the tablet market Android is still pretty invisible. Saying that it won is just wrong, at least for the tablet market. It might win in the future but it certainly hasn’t yet.
Too late, no momentum, no real innovations. Just one Javascript/node.js hype is not enough to push to the market a new product, that should compete with iOS and Android.
Try to imagine how big Android is today and what momentum it has.
Momentum that even Google has no control over, and it likely to pull the platform apart into multiple branches (fragmentation). Just look at what Amazon has planned for their new 7" tablet for example, it will be hardly recognisable as Android. They are stripping out all of the Google services and branding. As another example, look at what Baidu are planning to do with Android in China. Again, a completely different branch of Android is forming, it's like desktop Linux all over again (and we all remember how well that went when it came to dislodging Windows).
It you had said that iOS had won, I would have thought fair enough (as much as it pains me that iOS currently represents the future of mobile computing), but Android? Really?
I agree that iOS has won but the "fragmentation" issue that was spouted since day one is way over sensationalized. If Amazon strips out all of the Google products it shouldn't be considered "Android" but the first true branch. It again reinforces how open Google and Android are.
> Again, a completely different branch of Android is forming, it's like desktop Linux all over again (and we all remember how well that went when it came to dislodging Windows).
I for one am optimistic though, as Google-branded Android already is in commanding market position. I think these non-cooperating Android distributions might serve as a good motivator for Google to improve their work.
IOS vs. Android is almost the same story as Win 2000 vs. Linux 10 years ago, don't you see? Community of active developers, not mere consumers, is what matters. At least I believe it is Google's strategy. ^_^
And fragmentation issues will self-resolve, as it was in modern Linux world - only strongest will survive. And the winner is Ubuntu, like it or not. Community matters.
Where there will be at times small or major fragmentation in the branding, Android app development is still the unifying factor, and while apps are still the name of the game in town, Android will gradually gain strengthen.
That's a pretty compelling story especially if this new entity can capitalize on it with more management and sales autonomy, focus, and agility. I'm not saying everything about this strategic change is pretty, but I'd wait before calling this a failure.