Best Buy Seeing HP TouchPad Sell-Through Rate of Under 10%

[kdarling]

So roll your eyes all you want, you have no point here. Google was into the mobile business before Eric was on the board. It was even understood that Eric would not be privy to details about the tablet/phone project that was on-going.

Also, Apple invited Eric onboard in the middle of iPhone development, not the other way around.

Why would they do that if they were worried about secrecy? Some of the posters here seem to believe that Steve Jobs was incredibly stupid and showed Google everything about the iPhone ahead of time. Really? You think that little of him?

There's two reasons that are far more likely, in reverse order:

2) Apple wanted to keep tabs on what Google was doing with Android. By bringing a Google exec onboard, Apple could keep him in the dark about the iPhone's details while trying to get info on Android at the same time.

1) Apple needed Google's APIs and assistance to help make the iPhone launch a success. Imagine the first year of the iPhone without:

• Google maps.
• Builtin Google search.
• Youtube videos converted for the iPhone.
• Google cell location services for the GPS-less iPhone.
• Google web apps optimized for the iPhone.

These were (and are) core sales features, far more important than the simple weather or stocks or notepad apps that came with the iPhone.

 

[Wicked1]

Eventually they will all give up and they you will have an iPad from Apple, and one device from Google/Motorola and that will be about it.

No one can survive joining the game 2 years later even at a lower price, their app stores and products are just not as developed.

 

[diamond.g]

Actually, the Playbook is an amazing tablet. Granted it is hurt due to lack of app development and a truly boneheaded decision to NOT release a native email app from the start (supposedly this is coming late Summer / early Fall).

Anyone who simply goes by the stories they read and have not actually used the Playbook are missing out on one of the most fluid tablet experiences, even, dare I say it, smoother than the iPad. In addition, for those who don't need the large screen, the 7" form factor with the same resolution as most 10" tablets makes the screen one of the best looking of any tablet I have yet seen and I have worked with a good many of the current crop.

And while perhaps a bit on the heavy side for a 7" tablet, there is an overall feel and polish to the device that rivals and often exceeeds that of other devices. In my mind, relative to the post I quoted, HP's offering can't hold a candle to the Playbook.

But with bad press, limited apps (not even angry birds....yet ) and some first generation issues to be ironed out, there is no rush to explore the device by the masses and that is truly a shame. I for one am happy to own one and, compared with some other non-apple companies discussed here, RIM has come out with updates on a fairly nice clip. To me, the future with this device can be promising, even as a certain niche product, if the bottom line thinking these days can be somewhat held in check and a way can be found to get people familiarized with its true virtues.

Which is amusing, because by most accounts QNX's interface is basically a ripoff* of WebOS.


EDIT:* and by ripoff I mean a copy of, not trying to be derogatory

 

[LarryB08]

Which is amusing, because by most accounts QNX's interface is basically a ripoff* of WebOS.


EDIT:* and by ripoff I mean a copy of, not trying to be derogatory

I appreciate your comment and that may very well be true as I am a user of technology but I don't closely follow the ins and outs of the systems running the devices.

But I still stand by my comments. If QNX is a copy of WebOS, then this copy is far better in look, feel and performance to the HP tablet I experienced.

 

[PB165c]

Only one way into the tablet market

IMO the only way in is selling The TouchPad for $99.99 or giving it away (whatever they already produced) because in few months is what they gonna have to sell it anyway, and when that happens the other tablets will have better specs. Having these tablets in users hands will create demand for apps causing developers to jump in, so when they comeback with the next iteration of the touchpad, at least there will be the foundation of an ecosystem for it, cause the way it is now, it seems like they are offering something that can do lots but at the moment can only do this much, which is close to nothing and is worth almost nothing

 

[fertilized-egg]

Anyone who simply goes by the stories they read and have not actually used the Playbook are missing out on one of the most fluid tablet experiences, even, dare I say it, smoother than the iPad.

I actually use PlayBook from time to time, and I think one of its weaknesses is its "smoothness." It looks smooth and the frame rate is good but when you do the pinch&zoom, scrolling through pages, etc, I always feel weird because it doesn't track your finger movement all that well and the animation, while smooth, just doesn't feel right, not to mention the touch detection seems slightly iffy even after all those updates.

This is My Next has described it much better than I can in their review:

http://thisismynext.com/2011/04/13/blackberry-playbook-review/

In general, the PlayBook OS feels like it’s on the ice level of a Mega Man game — everything seems to be sliding away beyond your control. It’s a sloppy feeling, and that’s compounded by the fact that the OS doesn’t seem to be fully optimized for touch input yet; I found myself tapping and re-tapping on UI elements and web navigation with no result.

Android is a software platform guys, not a hardware platform. The iPhone's form factor did not change Android at all.

I don't know about that. The form factor change means there has to be more native touch-based gestures enabled in the OS shell and APIs. A simple example is how copy&paste have evolved in Android. Going from Donut to Gingerbread, the OS obviously has changed its handling of copy&paste to adopt to the form factor of the large touchscreen based device. Ditto for Symbian. Heck, Symbian even had a cursor displayed in its S60V5 browsers even when there was no pointing device. The OS has to follow the formfactor eventually because UI calls for it.

 

[HarryKeogh]

I'd be too scared to buy an HP TouchPad because who knows if it'll be around in a year or two.

Consumers know there will be support and new apps for their iPads and Android tablets years down the road.

Good point, Harry. But you were off by a year or two. HP just killed the TouchPad. Looks like those folks now own a shiny slab of obsolescence.

 

[balamw]

Good point, Harry. But you were off by a year or two. HP just killed the TouchPad. Looks like those folks now own a shiny slab of obsolescence.

For anyone not reading the front page, the news is here: https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/18/hp-to-spin-off-pc-business-as-sales-stagnate/

B

 

[revelated]

the iPad is just snappier, it "just works"

I haven't seen 1 other tablet computer be nearly as snappy and efficient at what it does than the iPad

Sounds like you've never touched the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

 

[Young Spade]

Sounds like you've never touched the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

He probably hasn't touched anything aside from the iPad. And, well, he's obviously heavily biased towards it.

 

[yamabushi]

HP should donate whatever is left of their inventory in January to charity, take a tax write off, and cut their losses. They can give them away as bundles with other products until then.

 

[peterdevries]

Sounds like you've never touched the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

I have played around with it, and wasn't impressed at all.

The thing that IMO sets the iPad apart from the Galaxy Tab is obviously the OS and partly the hardware, but I guess the latter is also a matter of taste which you prefer.

Much of the fluidity in the device comes from transitions between different UI elements: turn the tablet, switch apps, zooming, scrolling etc. iOS handles these things much more elegant and naturally than Android does IMO.

 

[SEATACMac]

Hp.... Hahaha!

I bought an HP Printer in the summer of 2007... I had issues and called tech support... India... The tech had no idea how to fix my problem, HP refused to stand behind their product and the refused to accept the garbage back after only 20 days.

I don't care if the HP tablet picks the winning lotto numbers, I WILL NEVER spend another dollar on an HP product.... and YES, I said NEVER.

i hope they fail and go out of business.

 

[KnightWRX]

I don't know about that. The form factor change means there has to be more native touch-based gestures enabled in the OS shell and APIs. A simple example is how copy&paste have evolved in Android. Going from Donut to Gingerbread, the OS obviously has changed its handling of copy&paste to adopt to the form factor of the large touchscreen based device. Ditto for Symbian. Heck, Symbian even had a cursor displayed in its S60V5 browsers even when there was no pointing device. The OS has to follow the formfactor eventually because UI calls for it.

Adding support for 1 input is not a fundamental change in the platform. It's like saying DOS was fundamentally changed because I suddenly loaded MOUSE.COM from AUTOEXEC.BAT.

The platform is very much hardware agnostic. It can be installed and used on many different form factors. The iPhone did not change Android. People pointing to that prototype and saying "Android before" and then showing a HTC Desire and going "Android now!" are basically ignoring all the other form factor phones running Android today. The fact is, that prototype was a blackberry portrait keyboard type phone, those are still around and run Android without any issue. Same for sliders of all kind (be it keyboard or gamepad sliders) in portrait or landscape mode or full touch screen phones.

It's ok that you don't know about it, but don't comment on it as if your opinion was fact then. Learn about it. Something a lot of posters should do around these parts. If you're going to bash it, learn about it so you can bash it intelligently.

I bought an HP Printer in the summer of 2007... I had issues and called tech support... India... The tech had no idea how to fix my problem, HP refused to stand behind their product and the refused to accept the garbage back after only 20 days.

I don't care if the HP tablet picks the winning lotto numbers, I WILL NEVER spend another dollar on an HP product.... and YES, I said NEVER.

i hope they fail and go out of business.

We bought a couple of boxes from HP, nothing much, a few million dollars worth of kit for about 38 servers. First week, one started refusing to boot, a smallish box with 16 Itanium cores and 96 GB of RAM. Within 4 hours the tech was on-site with a complete replacement box (yes, over 200,000$ worth of hardware) and the HP consultant was showing us how to reconfigure the UEFI to detect our boot-on-SAN device to start the new hardware back up with the old one's OS.

HP will not go out of business because of that level of service. Oh right, that's their enterprise division, the one that actually brings in money and the only one they seem to care about with good reason.

 

[BaldiMac]

The platform is very much hardware agnostic. It can be installed and used on many different form factors. The iPhone did not change Android. People pointing to that prototype and saying "Android before" and then showing a HTC Desire and going "Android now!" are basically ignoring all the other form factor phones running Android today. The fact is, that prototype was a blackberry portrait keyboard type phone, those are still around and run Android without any issue. Same for sliders of all kind (be it keyboard or gamepad sliders) in portrait or landscape mode or full touch screen phones.

You've been trying to make this argument for a while now, and it's based on misdirection. The point in showing Android before and after the iPhone is the difference in the software, not the hardware as you trying to make it about. The Android OS was more similar to the Blackberry OS before the iPhone. It was more similar to iOS after the iPhone. If you can't acknowledge those differences, you are just ignoring the obvious. It doesn't matter that Android is still on similar hardware as it was demoed on back then.

 

[KnightWRX]

You've been trying to make this argument for a while now, and it's based on misdirection. The point in showing Android before and after the iPhone is the difference in the software, not the hardware as you trying to make it about. The Android OS was more similar to the Blackberry OS before the iPhone. It was more similar to iOS after the iPhone. If you can't acknowledge those differences, you are just ignoring the obvious. It doesn't matter that Android is still on similar hardware as it was demoed on back then.

Look, you're on my ignore list. I knew you replied to me and that's the only reason I hit "View Post", to see your ramblings. Save your breath, this is the only reply I'll make to you :

No I'm not basing it on missdirection. The OS was a "blackberry type OS" or a "iPhone type OS" ? That doesn't even make sense. What similarities is there between Android to iOS that weren't present in the planning or prototype or just plain obvious ?

Please don't say icon grids and icons. Those aren't an iOS innovation and were around mobile OSes way before Android or iOS. The plain fact is, the hardware's form factor has nothing to do with Android. Android is hardware agnostic, and the argument that the prototype is "before" is completely wrong. That's only the hardware they used to show off and test the software itself.

Anyway, don't believe me all you want and keep saying the very wrong "Android copied iOS!", you're just the one not understanding the concept, and frankly, I don't care with the level of bias you've shown that earned you the spot you have on my ignore list. Good day sir.

 

[LarryB08]

I actually use PlayBook from time to time, and I think one of its weaknesses is its "smoothness." It looks smooth and the frame rate is good but when you do the pinch&zoom, scrolling through pages, etc, I always feel weird because it doesn't track your finger movement all that well and the animation, while smooth, just doesn't feel right, not to mention the touch detection seems slightly iffy even after all those updates.

This is My Next has described it much better than I can in their review:

http://thisismynext.com/2011/04/13/blackberry-playbook-review/

I have to completely disagree with that assessment. The look and feel of the UI is one of the easiest and most intuitive - and the touch capabilities are silky smooth which is a very very good thing.

One of the reasons I tossed aside the HP Touchpad is everything felt like I had to press harder and harder just to get things to move as I wanted them - there is terrible stuttering of movement on the Touchpad, a very noticeable sluggishness. I welcome the exacting and smooth nature I have found with touch in the Playbook UI and have never had to touch more than once to register any action (something I could never say with the Touchpad).

But, of course, this is a Mac board and I understand there will be little agreement here with any of this so to each his or her own. And sorry if I did drag this whole sub thread on a bit. But I just couldn't let the original comment about at least the Touchpad not being a Playbook go without comment as it is the Touchpad which is definitely not in the same league as the Playbook.

 

[BaldiMac]

Look, you're on my ignore list. I knew you replied to me and that's the only reason I hit "View Post", to see your ramblings. Save your breath, this is the only reply I'll make to you :

Super. Why is that important? Reply or don't. I just disagree with your post and feel like commenting.

No I'm not basing it on missdirection. The OS was a "blackberry type OS" or a "iPhone type OS" ? That doesn't even make sense. What similarities is there between Android to iOS that weren't present in the planning or prototype or just plain obvious ?

A focus on multitouch input. Isn't that obvious? The prototypes we saw were based on button navigation and context menus. Do you really not see the fundamental differences between the Blackberry OS in 2006 and the iPhone OS in 2007? It's hard to go into any more specific differences between Android pre and post iPhone, because we don't have many details. Just a few screenshots.

Please don't say icon grids and icons. Those aren't an iOS innovation and were around mobile OSes way before Android or iOS. The plain fact is, the hardware's form factor has nothing to do with Android. Android is hardware agnostic, and the argument that the prototype is "before" is completely wrong. That's only the hardware they used to show off and test the software itself.

Fortunately, I never made those arguments. I suppose it's easier to argue with things you make up.

Anyway, don't believe me all you want and keep saying the very wrong "Android copied iOS!",

I never said that. But, okay. Seems pretty obvious. Android copied some ideas from the iPhone OS. iOS has copied Android. Kinda hard to deny either one.

you're just the one not understanding the concept, and frankly, I don't care with the level of bias you've shown that earned you the spot you have on my ignore list. Good day sir.

And we're back to the ad hominem crap.

 

[diamond.g]

All in all it is a bit sad to see HP give up (after not really doing anything). Then to turn around and complain that the TouchPad wasn't the number 2 tablet out the gate really speaks to their arrogance, stupidity, and total misunderstanding of the situation.

HP was in the position to be #2 if they just followed through with the Apple mythos. They already had vertical integration. They just had to put some oomph behind it. (IMHO)

So now a good OS (which according to Engadet ran very well on iPad 2 hardware) is going to die...

 

[Young Spade]

HP should donate whatever is left of their inventory in January to charity, take a tax write off, and cut their losses. They can give them away as bundles with other products until then.

That would definitely help them sell tablets. Give them away in bundles for back to school like Microsoft is doing with Xbox 360s.

I'd definitely be tempted to get a new HP computer (not like they aren't selling anyway) if it came with the Touchpad. They could write some software to allow bluetooth or close proximity sharing of documents and files and really push the thing out there.

 

[divinox]

I don't know about that considering how many millions of tablets have been sold.

While you can get a Windows notebook or netbook for the same price, you can't achieve the portability, ease of use and battery life of a tablet. So that's the trade off of a tablet versus a notebook/netbook.

And 9.9 out of 10 still goes for the latter.

 

[Young Spade]

And 9.9 out of 10 still goes for the latter.

There's obviously a reason for that

 

[h4lp m3]

This is Android today :

Correction: That's LOW END Android today.
I'm not sure exactly what your point is, but I bought one of those Motorola charm deals and it literally is crap. I have to charge it every night in fear that I'll miss calls in the morning because the damn thing drains even when you're not using it. Speaker phone is so weak it's pathetic and it just loves to pocket dial.

I'm not sure exactly what my point is, but the majority of people think of THIS when they hear Android. Even then, the best Android still sucks- and that' no just opinion it's FACT- and that's the bottom line because Stone Cold said so!

 

[KnightWRX]

Correction: That's LOW END Android today.
I'm not sure exactly what your point is

My point is Android is software and a phone's form factor has nothing to do with Android. Thus the iPhone (hardware) did not influence Android (software).

And while the Motorola Charm is low end, it's still a phone sold with Android as its OS, and it has a form factor that is similar to the Android prototype. Hence any claim that the Android prototype is a "before" type deal is wrong. Android didn't change, it still runs on that form factor phone.

It's also funny how you deleted the reference to the HTC ChaCha and to the point. Next time read the post, don't just look at the pictures.

 

[balamw]

If the rumors of $99 clearance pricing for the 16GB model this weekend are correct, I'm in. I'm sure they'll get Android running on it, heck it runs on the iPhone, but it'll be useful just with webOS.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/19/let-the-liquidation-begin-hps-16gb-touchpad-on-sale-for-99/

Best Buy claims to be out of stock online and in stores...

B