HP to Reenter Tablet Market with Windows 8

[KnightWRX]

They show off the Windows 7 Slate. They throw it under the bus and buy Palm.

Uh ? They didn't throw it under the bus. In fact, they sold it for quite a while longer than the TouchPad.

I don't even get this article, HP didn't "enter" the tablet market with its Palm purchase nor did they "exit" it with the Touchpad discontinuation. They have been making Windows tablets since the early 00s, starting with I think Windows XP Tablet edition.

Why would a tablet with Windows 8 be HP "re-entering" the market ? They never left!

This whole article is a mess of ignorance.

 

[shartypants]

Guess HP forgot already how painful it is to have pavement hit you right in the face!

 

[KnightWRX]

Just. Make. Printers.

Yeah, throw all those nice Integrity and Proliant servers away, those SAN solutions and storage arrays, all that software and consulting that's worth billions. Just make stupid printers.

Some people sure don't have a clue what HP even does and it shows.

 

[hazmatzak]

This article is wording it like HP was entering the tablet market to compete with Apple. Truthfully, they had the concept announced a few weeks prior to Apple announcing the iPad when HP announced the HP Slate. Sure it wasn't that great of a device, but HP did show interest in this market back before the original iPad was announced.

Those few weeks mean virtually nothing. HP announced during CES, scheduled as usual just after the holidays. Apple also has a history of January announcements, but they are free to do them when they want, and don't feel the need to pre-empt others.

Microsoft had been trying and failing in the tablet market for a decade. During that same time, Apple had been rumored on-and-off to have one; but rumors started going full-tilt six months prior. So it is plausible that HP felt they could refine existing designs and get something to the market in response; if not first, at least early enough.

While the article points out that HP bought Palm, it doesn't make clear that they did it in April, the month after the iPad starting shipping; which leads more weight to the idea that they did it in response. The article doesn't mention the Slate, which didn't ship until October and went nowhere. Of course, there was less fanfare with that failure, since they didn't pay a billion dollars for it, like they did for the TouchPad.

 

[B777Forevar]

Maybe they will do better this time.

It's a shame they didn't succeed with WebOS. It was a nice OS with a lot of potential.

 

[rjohnstone]

Yeah, throw all those nice Integrity and Proliant servers away, those SAN solutions and storage arrays, all that software and consulting that's worth billions. Just make stupid printers.

Some people sure don't have a clue what HP even does and it shows.

This^^^

We have THOUSANDS of HP Proliant servers and they're rock solid.
HP's network consulting team are no slackers either. They make some of the Cisco reps look like first year ITT drop outs.

 

[jmgregory1]

All of you people hoping HP fails are idiots.

Apple is just a brand. I have no religious affiliation with it.

More successful products = more competition = more innovation = cheaper prices = happy consumers.

Period. HP isn't some "evil company". I hope Windows 8 tablets become very successful and give Apple a run for it's money.

I hear that so many times. Like it took competition for Apple to create the iPhone or iPad. Or that Apple's pricing is out of line. Ever hear the old saying, you get what you pay for?

No HP isn't an evil company, but they are a company with no clear direction on the consumer products side, for the long term. They're making decisions based around quarterly statements. And an old way of doing things.

The comment Meg made about the tablet market was so incorrect as to be considered misleading or worse, that I would give her a no confidence vote. They should have held back on the last go around until it was competitive and pour the needed money into making it so.

The only thing they are doing now is using Microsoft's marketing money to support the product.

 

[Bluefusion]

This gives me hope that this touchpad I have might be able to get Windows 8 installed on it.

Are you nuts? There are at least 5 reasons why it can't happen, and another 3 reasons why it won't happen.

----------

Yeah, throw all those nice Integrity and Proliant servers away, those SAN solutions and storage arrays, all that software and consulting that's worth billions. Just make stupid printers.

Some people sure don't have a clue what HP even does and it shows.

Not only that, HP's printers are crap to begin with. Their OTHER products are a whole lot better.
(Have suffered through 4-6 HP printers over the years: now, it's Canon forever -- too bad no one carries ink for Canon printers anymore, even though you can buy them ANYWHERE you could get an HP or Lexmark. It's a conspiracy!)

 

[rjohnstone]

Are you nuts? There are at least 5 reasons why it can't happen, and another 3 reasons why it won't happen.

Care to name them?
Once MS releases an ARM version, devs will be all over it.
The only single reason it wouldn't happen would be licensing restrictions from MS.

 

[MRU]

Maybe they will do better this time.

It's a shame they didn't succeed with WebOS. It was a nice OS with a lot of potential.

It really was. I really liked the way Pre 3 and Touchpad would work together to share photos etc. a really nice feature that hopefully apple bring to the table with iOS 6 and new iPhone

Care to name them?
Once MS releases an ARM version, devs will be all over it.
The only single reason it wouldn't happen would be licensing restrictions from MS.

Not out of the realms of possibility at all. ICS on touchpad already proves its possible to run other OS's on it.

 

[Bluefusion]

LOL!

HP's strategy is: "We throw ourselves to it, and if we stick, we take it".

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Kinda reminds us of OS/2...

I think the strategy is more "let's throw ourselves at it, and regardless of what happens, we'll stick with it for an indeterminate length of time. But if there's even the slightest chance that we might be close to innovating, let's run away as fast as we can."

 

[NAG]

Uh ? They didn't throw it under the bus. In fact, they sold it for quite a while longer than the TouchPad.

It was billed as a consumer device (showed it with the Twilight book cover, I believe). Then they relegate it to a niche enterprise market and began pushing WebOS instead. They even hinted at moving all their devices to run WebOS (including PCs). I'd call that throwing under the bus.

The rest of your post had nothing to do with what I said so I won't reply to that.

 

[KnightWRX]

Ha Ha. I've been waiting for an Intel tablet with a real operating system, either OS X or Windows capable of running Photoshop.

Why did you wait ? Again, HP have been making those for quite a while. Heck, the TC4400 had a Core 2 Duo processor and up to 4 GB of RAM... back in 2006. Running Windows XP...

----------

It was billed as a consumer device (showed it with the Twilight book cover, I believe). Then they relegate it to a niche enterprise market and began pushing WebOS instead. I'd call that throwing under the bus.

No it wasn't. In fact, it still isn't. It's posted on their "small and medium business" site, consumers are free to get it :

http://www.hp.com/canada/products/landing/notebooks/slate.html

Also, they even released the "Slate 2" :

http://www.hp.com/canada/products/landing/notebooks/slate2.html

The rest of your post had nothing to do with what I said.

The rest of my post was aimed at the Macrumors article, not your post.

 

[Deelron]

I'm sure I'll buy one... When they slash them to 99 dollars.

 

[TheReadyPrompt]

Nobody cares. It will just be another "me, too" commodity tablet CTOs can coo over. You'll see see them languishing with the other rice-cakes (boring and tasteless wafers) at Office Depot.

 

[NAG]

No it wasn't. In fact, it still isn't.

So how do you explain this?

http://gizmodo.com/5442200/hps-windows-7-slate-device-revealed-by-steve-ballmer

"They're more powerful than a phone and almost as powerful as a PC. Perfect for reading, surfing the web and taking entertainment on the go," said Ballmer at his CES 2010 opening keynote.

Because yeah, my midsized business revolves around reading Twilight (as you stated their sales pitch consisted of business being their exclusive market...or you could read the quote as aimed at another market).

The rest of my post was aimed at the Macrumors article, not your post.

Yup, just pointing out that you should have separated it better because it looked like you might have been referring to something I said.

 

[TheReadyPrompt]

This whole article is a mess of ignorance.

This entire forum and, indeed, often MacRumors.com is precisely that.

 

[Bluefusion]

Care to name them?
Once MS releases an ARM version, devs will be all over it.
The only single reason it wouldn't happen would be licensing restrictions from MS.

Can't happen:
1. Licensing restriction as you stated: serious roadblock that basically means the idea is DOA.
2. HP is not interested in producing a niche product FOR users of a niche product that they've already killed as expediently as possible.
3. The hardware is, by definition, very weak compared to what will be used to run full Windows 8 (the real deal, not WoA)
4. While you might (in theory) be capable of running WoA, it will need numerous drivers written to run on Touchpad HW - which would be HP's job, so is unlikely (see #1-3)
5. How much luck have people had with "jailbreaking" or hacking WebOS? (Admittedly I don't know much about this.) It's likely that the TouchPad itself could prove difficult to circumvent if one were to unofficially "jailbreak" W8 onto it.

Won't happen:
1. Windows on ARM is not going to provide anyone with a smart, polished, or economically-viable experience for close to a year, if at all. When Windows 8 launches, BELIEVE ME, everyone will want the "real deal"-- or they'll be waiting for the "service pack" that makes WoA a solid performer. At that point, it will be many years since the Touchpad came and went. (I think the inability to use Windows apps is going to confuse the **** out of people who own Windows 8 laptops which "behave" the same as their tablets.)
2. There is absolutely no financial reason for HP to do this: they want to sell new hardware!
3. HP's product line (and goals) are already incredibly complex, and they already have a lot of work ahead of them: they are not and have never been interested in backwards compatibility (how many kinds of ink do they make? how many different models?). Ideologically, this is just something HP doesn't do, even when/if it MIGHT make them money.

 

[mertyz]

Yeah, throw all those nice Integrity and Proliant servers away, those SAN solutions and storage arrays, all that software and consulting that's worth billions. Just make stupid printers.

Some people sure don't have a clue what HP even does and it shows.

Believe me, I do. Their servers rock. Most of their consumer products however, do not and we are all talking about their consumer products here.

 

[Frisco]

Just. Make. Printers.

I hate their printers! HP--just make nothing.

 

[Analog Kid]

Didn't Steve Jobs say something along those lines, too? It is borderline catastrophic how little innovation and thought goes into their products.

Wouldn't surprise me. I know he had a name for the way hiring changes when a company gets big-- "The Bimbo Explosion" or something like that, but HPs problems are much higher up the management chain.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Agree. They seemed to only have short term goals, not long term plans.

Even so they do Hoshin planning

 

[zzLZHzz]

if it is no better than the existing samsung series 7. i am not buying it.

 

[cycomiko]

I fully expect HP and Microsoft to provide no support for the touchpad

Why would microsoft support a product they had absolutely nothing to do with?

 

[TeamMojo]

This too, shall fail. Note that Bradley was the CEO of Palm, now he's a VP in a printer division. HP needs to get back to leading instead of following. Getting in bed with Microsoft never leads to jack sh-t.