Touchpad / webOS
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a “new” HP Touchpad for what I thought was the bargain price of of $299. Turns out that wasn’t really the case.
On Friday HP announced they were no longer going to manufacture the Palm Pre phone line or the Touchpads. Although I was disappointed, I really like the Touchpad, and it already has all the apps I wanted to run on it. I decided to keep the Touchpad anyway.
On Saturday HP started a firesale, with reports of over 300K Touchpads on store shelves or storage, they decided the best way to get rid of them was to sell them for $99-$149 (16G-32G). They’ve been flying off the shelves. Fortunately HP seems to be doing the right thing here, and refunding peoples purchases down to the new fire sale prices.
In a strange twist of fate, HP getting out of the hardware business may be the jump that webOS needs. Having a user base of over 300K may help to keep the developers active on the platform, making it more attractive to a potential suitor.
People have made calls for webOS to be open sourced, while I’d love to see this happen I thinks it highly unlikely. Give that HP purchased Palm in part for to its large patent portfolio, open sourcing a webOS would require granting access to those patents, lowering their value for any potential acquirer.
I’ve started to write a little app in the wonderful Enyo framework, I’ve always liked to learn new technologies, even if this one currently appears to be doomed. Hope I can finish it time to get in the App Catalog.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2011 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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