A KEYBOARD OF YOU WANT TO TYPE
HERE's THE CASE
Posted on 02/09/2011 12:56:24 PM PST by SeekAndFind
HP unveiled its iPad clone, the TouchPad today.
While the TouchPad is not a complete disaster -- it looks pretty nice, and seems to have good software -- it is NOT a significant threat to Apple's iPad.
We still expect Apple to dominate the tablet market for years to come.
Why isn't HP a threat?
* It's not better than the iPad -- especially the improved iPad 2 that is already in production. The hardware and software need to be MUCH BETTER than the iPad to stand out -- a "leapfrog" product -- and they're not. Sure, there is nifty wireless "Touchstone" charging. But that's not a big deal.
* No developer advantage. Sure, "Angry Birds" is coming to the TouchPad. And the Kindle app. But this is HP playing catch-up to Apple -- not leading. The TouchPad developer ecosystem is WAY behind iOS.
* No distribution advantage. Apple has the Apple Store. Android has a massive partner network. HP doesn't have much.
* No price advantage. At least nothing that HP wanted to announce today.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I don't want to buy an Apple product...
Physically, it looks a lot like an iPad. The case isn’t much of a case if it doesn’t have a flap to cover the screen. IMO
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
The serious competition to the iPad will be running Android Honeycomb, not WebOS.
iPad is the iPad killer.
I’ve known a ton of people who bought one and have subsequently got rid of it. Truth is, the fact that they won’t support some basic things like Flash are slowly killing them over time.
Oh, that and the fact that they filter results for sites like youtube.com so there are certain results you CAN’T get on an iPad that you can get on a PC. Talk about control freaks.
HTML 5 might render irrelevant in the very near future, so BFD.
Point is, if you have a use case for a tablet, a tablet is what works for you. If you have a use case for it. If you think it's going to bake your bread and mow your lawn and render every other computing device and smart phone you have in your possession null and void, you're going to be disappointed and give the tablet up.
If there weren't valid use cases for tablets, and if device makers didn't think they could make money off those use cases, device makers wouldn't be killing themselves just trying to get up to par with iPad. They're doing a lousy job trying to keep up to par with iPad, but hey, that's show business.
Some other poster already said it: Honeycomb is the thing to watch in this space.
That’s just a canned video presentation playing on the Xoom, though, not the actual software, right?
True. But the Xoom is said to be available at Best Buy on Feb 24th, so live reviews will follow shortly.
And just to be clear: I have no problem with gun-decking anything for demo purposes. I'm in the internets biz myself, and we do it all the time. I just wanted to be sure that's what I was looking at.
Those are some lame reasons.
You like your Viewsonic G? I heard it was glitchy, or could be, but it has the Tegra2 chip, like the Xoom has, and costs $500 or less.
The Zoom is supposed to be good although pricey. What about Rim’s Playbook?
"The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem." -- Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia.
The challenge for HP and RIM is going to be building an ecosystem. The iOS ecosystem is well-established, and Android isn't far behind; it lags far behind in the raw number of apps, but it's sufficiently robust that there's an app for most needs, and developers find it worth their time to port apps to it. Whether developers will find the time to bring apps to WebOS or QNX is very much an open question. Ditto Windows CE Pocket PC Windows Mobile Windows Phone 7, which appears to be where Nokia is going.
I can't begin to guess how many competing ecosystems the market will support; Microsoft is a credible third player just because they have tons of money they're willing to lose in the intermediate term to gain market share (see XBox). RIM is trying to leverage a base that's been fading for a couple of years, and Palm HP one that's been fading for five or ten. WebOS could be the OS/2 of mobile operating systems, a solution a lot of folks thought was the best available, but that never really got off the ground.
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