HP Turns WebOS Open Source, Could Offer Manufacturers Alternative to Android

[vjl323]

Palm never nearly went out of business. HP Touchpad is a great tablet. Marketing is what you need to sell anything. You can have the best product out there but you won't be able to sell it well without marketing.

For those who weren't born recently, they might appreciate this, from a feature/marketing standpoint:

Windows 95 = Android
Mac OS = iOS
AmigaOS = webOS

The Amiga had a great OS and hardware combo - in many regards better than the Mac. But it had no marketing. MS had great marketing, but a sucky product. So, as you say, marketing has a lot to do with it. And as Steve once said, [paraphrased]: MS sells crappy products, but does so very well, due to their marketing.

 

[*LTD*]

The reason iPad sold so well was because of great marketing.

Uh no. The reason it sold so well and continues to sell so well is because it's one helluva great product. It's a typical Apple product, with Apple's typical attention to detail, user experience, and build quality.

 

[thenerdal]

For those who weren't born recently, they might appreciate this, from a feature/marketing standpoint:

Windows 95 = Android
Mac OS = iOS
AmigaOS = webOS

The Amiga had a great OS and hardware combo - in many regards better than the Mac. But it had no marketing. MS had great marketing, but a sucky product. So, as you say, marketing has a lot to do with it. And as Steve once said, [paraphrased]: MS sells crappy products, but does so very well, due to their marketing.

It did have marketing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZiWTdc6Dc8

MS doesn't sell crappy products. What are you on?

----------

Uh no. The reason it sold so well and continues to sell so well is because it's one helluva great product. It's a typical Apple product, with Apple's typical attention to detail, user experience, and build quality.

True, but it would not have sold well without their marketing.

 

[Renzatic]

Following the last few posts...

So crappy products sell because they have great marketing. Doesn't matter how crappy it is, word of mouth doesn't exist. As long as you're showing commericals on TV, it'll sell.

But you don't need great marketing if you have a great product. Word of mouth will spread the word about how great a product it is.

Unless you have a great product that doesn't sell well. Word of mouth doesn't exist. You should've advertised more.

In short

MS Products - Sell because they're advertised alot, but they're crap.
WebOS - Didn't sell because no one knew about it.
Apple Products - ARE SO AWESOME THEY BREAK ALL THE RULES!

...wuh?

 

[vjl323]

Windows 7 is a failure? That's a laughable statement.

Microsoft messed up with Vista but 7 is a whole different animal. It's actually better optimised, fast, very stable and has excellent memory management. Get out of your Apple reality distortion field.

Yet, Windows 7 PCs are flying of shelves more than Mac PCs.

Interestingly enough, the statement about it being better optimized and fast is not quite true. You can google it, but 7 is actually *slower* than Vista with tests done after it was available to the public. What MS did was to make it appear quicker, but reducing the time the "busy" mouse cursor was on the screen. This means you can interact with the OS, but those interactions are very slow until the OS catches up. In Vista, the OS didn't allow the interaction until the OS was fully ready. Now it takes longer for the OS to get fully ready, but MS gives you the mouse cursor to fool you into thinking the system is up and running.

I've been using Windows since 1.0 came out [and the Amiga since the Amiga came out, and the Mac since the Mac came out]. For me, the best post Windows 3 OS was Windows 2000. XP, Vista, and 7 underperform when compared to Win2k [and my fav pre-95 Windows OS was NT 3.51 and before Win2k, NT 4.0].

Most of the people I interact with in Real Life who use Windows all dislike 7 and have either sold their PC for a Mac or plan on doing so when they need to upgrade next. To me, that says a lot about customer satisfaction. Win 7 PCs are cheap, but you get what you pay for, and you're paying for an inferior OS that comes bundled with an inferior user experience. Normals are finally expecting more from their computers as they get more comfortable with them, and don't want to keep wrestling with them. This is the appeal of the Mac.

 

[thenerdal]

Following the last few posts...

So crappy products sell because they have great marketing. Doesn't matter how crappy it is, word of mouth doesn't exist. As long as you're showing commericals on TV, it'll sell.

But you don't need great marketing if you have a great product. Word of mouth will spread the word about how great a product it is.

Unless you have a great product that doesn't sell well. Word of mouth doesn't exist. You should've advertised more.

In short

MS Products - Sell because they're advertised alot, but they're crap.
WebOS - Didn't sell because no one knew about it.
Apple Products - ARE SO AWESOME THEY BREAK ALL THE RULES!

...wuh?

Yes. Crappy products can sell well with great marketing. Not saying MS products are crap, because they're not.

If you have a great product, you won't be able to sell it without marketing. That is a fact.

People don't have senses that tell them "Oh! I smell a great product!"

Word of Mouth=Direct Marketing

 

[Renzatic]

Interestingly enough, the statement about it being better optimized and fast is not quite true. You can google it, but 7 is actually *slower* than Vista with tests done after it was available to the public. What MS did was to make it appear quicker, but reducing the time the "busy" mouse cursor was on the screen. This means you can interact with the OS, but those interactions are very slow until the OS catches up. In Vista, the OS didn't allow the interaction until the OS was fully ready. Now it takes longer for the OS to get fully ready, but MS gives you the mouse cursor to fool you into thinking the system is up and running.

What? No. All tests posted showed it to be exactly the same as Vista SP1, with some boosts to bootup times. There's been a slight widening in the gap between the two since 7's been around for a couple years now, and the drivers have matured. But for the most part, 7 is roughly equal to vista, with a slight advantage.

I should know, because I studied the hell out of it before jumping from XP to 7. At the time, I was riding the Vista Sucks bandwagon, and was thinking about moving over to the Mac if 7 ended up being an underperformer.

The beta, and all the test result coverage convinced me to stay. I've been pretty well happy ever since.

Yes. Crappy products can sell well with great marketing. Not saying MS products are crap, because they're not.

They can. And they do. But rarely ever for long. It's a mixture of marketing and word of mouth that propels a product to sell as much as Windows 7 and the iPad. Marketing alone can only get you so far.

Think of it this way, if marketing and hype alone sold products, we'd all be riding Segways right now. You gotta have a good product, AND good marketing.

 

[SandynJosh]

For all of you arguing about the merits of good marketing:

Good marketing will help sell anything... ANYTHING. That fact was proved with the "Pet Rock" product.

Good marketing will help a great product sell even better then it normally would. What happens is often a company will try to go "cheap" and let the product sell itself. In the case of Apple, they put a lot of money into marketing and sell a boatload of product... extremely profitably! Apple multiplies their marketing dollars through high sales at high profits. Most companies don't really commit to their products as solidly as Apple.

When Apple stops thinking that the Apple TV is a "hobby" product and marries it up with a total solution and throws their marketing behind it, stand back, because the doors will be blown off the barn!!

 

[thenerdal]

They can. And they do. But rarely ever for long. It's a mixture of marketing and word of mouth that propels a product to sell as much as Windows 7 and the iPad. Marketing alone can only get you so far.

Word of mouth is marketing.

http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingmethods/a/womvsviral.htm

 

[SandynJosh]

What? No. All tests posted showed it to be exactly the same as Vista SP1, with some boosts to bootup times. There's been a slight widening in the gap between the two since 7's been around for a couple years now, and the drivers have matured. But for the most part, 7 is roughly equal to vista, with a slight advantage.

I should know, because I studied the hell out of it before jumping from XP to 7. At the time, I was riding the Vista Sucks bandwagon, and was thinking about moving over to the Mac if 7 ended up being an underperformer.

The beta, and all the test result coverage convinced me to stay. I've been pretty well happy ever since..

Good for you, but think how estatic you could have been had you jumped to MacOS.

 

[Renzatic]

I use OSX all the time. I think it's neat, and does have a few advantages over 7 (EXPOSE!). But there's not so much of a huge difference in quality that I feel like I'm settling by sticking with Windows.

Word of mouth is marketing.

http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingmethods/a/womvsviral.htm

It's marketing based upon personal positive experiences. If someone doesn't like something, they won't go talking to their friends and neighbors about how awesome it is.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Palm never nearly went out of business. HP Touchpad is a great tablet. Marketing is what you need to sell anything. You can have the best product out there but you won't be able to sell it well without marketing.

And you can have the worst product out there... and marketing will only take it so far. Sooner or later... the secret will be out.

I know marketing is important... but it's not the most important thing. A product must be able to stand on its own.


The reviews for the TouchPad were lukewarm at best... and they didn't give any reason to buy it instead of an iPad.

It was the TouchPad itself that was being reviewed... not a comparison of marketing tactics. No amount of clever HP marketing would have made those reviews favorable.

The TouchPad wasn't bad at all... it's just that there were other products that were a better choice. Competition is fierce! At the $500 mark... the TouchPad simply wasn't a good buy.


As for Palm... here are some reasons they didn't do so well:

- Palm gave Sprint too long of an exclusive to sell the Pre and Pixi
- Palm never gave anyone a reason to buy the Pre instead of an iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android phone
- Even after all the hype, the Pre just wasn't that good
- Palm's advertising was terrible
- Palm didn't let developers make WebOS apps until it was too late
- The Pixi was an especially lame follow-up to the Pre
- Palm didn't have the equivalent of an iPod touch
- Palm screwed up the way the Pre syncs with computers by trying to rely on an iTunes hack
- Palm investor Bono wasted his celebrity promoting BlackBerry instead of Palm
- Palm's investors made ridiculous statements that damaged Palm's credibility

Only 2 of those reasons can be directly related to marketing. The rest are bad hardware and even worse management.

Like I said... a product must be able to stand on its own.

 

[thenerdal]

The reviews for the TouchPad were lukewarm at best... and they didn't give any reason to buy it instead of an iPad.

Amazon begs to differ, read the reviews, most of them are good.

http://www.amazon.com/HP-TouchPad-9-7-Inch-Tablet-Computer/dp/B0055D66V4

Two key things you need to sell a product: Marketing, and it has to be good.

Marketing to start selling a product and it has to be good so it will continue to sell.

Without marketing, you won't be able to start selling a product. If it's not a great product, you won't continue to sell.

The better the marketing, the better you'll sell. The better the product, the better you'll keep on selling.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Word of mouth is marketing.

http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingmethods/a/womvsviral.htm

Yes... word of mouth is a form of marketing.

Apple relied on that particular form of marketing by launching the iPad 15 months prior to the TouchPad's launch.

Of course people are gonna talk about it...

 

[Michael Scrip]

If it's not a great product, you won't continue to sell.

Doesn't that describe exactly what happened to the TouchPad?

The TouchPad was only good... while the iPad was great. People chose the iPad... and HP dumped the TouchPad.

Did people ONLY buy the iPad because of those cute TV commercials? Or was it something more?

What I've been saying this whole time is.... the product itself has more to do with its success than marketing. Of course marketing will continue to exist... why else are Coke and Pepsi still running commercials?

If you go to Best Buy to look at tablets... the TouchPad is sitting there only 10 feet from the iPad.

Why did more people walk out of the store with iPads rather than TouchPads?

Was it only because the iPad TV commercials were better than the TouchPad commercials?

Or was it because the iPad felt better in the hand... the iPad has so many apps and games... someone they know already has an iPad and loves it...

Put the iPad and the TouchPad side-by-side without a single piece of marketing... which will people choose?

 

[AppleScruff1]

Put the iPad and the TouchPad side-by-side without a single piece of marketing... which will people choose?

Take the Apple off the iPad and see what happens then.

 

[thenerdal]

Doesn't that describe exactly what happened to the TouchPad?

The TouchPad was only good... while the iPad was great. People chose the iPad... and HP dumped the TouchPad.

Did people ONLY buy the iPad because of those cute TV commercials? Or was it something more?

What I've been saying this whole time is.... the product itself has more to do with its success than marketing. Of course marketing will continue to exist... why else are Coke and Pepsi still running commercials?

If you go to Best Buy to look at tablets... the TouchPad is sitting there only 10 feet from the iPad.

Why did more people walk out of the store with iPads rather than TouchPads?

Was it only because the iPad TV commercials were better than the TouchPad commercials?

Or was it because the iPad felt better in the hand... the iPad has so many apps and games... someone they know already has an iPad and loves it...

Put the iPad and the TouchPad side-by-side without a single piece of marketing... which will people choose?

Touchpad didn't sell well at first, but did sell well during the fire sale. It sold so well, that it became the best selling Tablet other than the iPad.

There are no Touchpads in Bestbuy anymore.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Take the Apple off the iPad and see what happens then.

And that HP logo did wonders for the TouchPad?

 

[AppleScruff1]

And that HP logo did wonders for the TouchPad?

I bet if people didn't know it was made by Apple the results would be different, even if only by a small margin. The average Joe has Apple on the brain and as LTD has stated on many occasions, Joe isn't a tech person. He doesn't understand what he is buying.

 

[OldMike]

Wow I'm surprised. Before HP decided to open source it, I figured there was not anymore room for another competing os, between iOS, Android and WP7. I was under the wrong assumption that HP was going to just kill it off.

But now that it is open sourced, who knows what might happen. WebOS seems to be pretty slick and since it is based on HTML and Javascript with a little mojo action, it should be the simplest platform to develop for.

Very interesting twist!

 

[wordsmith27]

so now google will implement web os tech into android... cards will be a nice addition along with some visuals

 

[SandynJosh]

The whole "blah stole from blah", or "bleh is a copycat" argument is SO old these days. Hell, it was old practically the first time someone started muttering on about it.

See, people. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Every company out there takes good ideas from elsewhere, and implements them alongside their own good ideas. Apple does it. MS does it. Google does it. In the end, it means better products for us all. So why the hell do some of you even care who copied who?

Imagine if you were to take this attitude and extend it to other fields of interest. Like what if physics majors argued about who copied who.

"I don't know why Einstein is so well liked these days. All he did was copy ideas Newton came up with centuries ago. But hey. Not everyone can be clever and innovative OLOL. I hope his family sues the everliving crap out Einstein ".

Einstein didn't copy Newton, he proved him wrong.

Ditto. I'm really happy about this too. I never felt it's potential was fully realized on any device it shipped with. I'm looking forward to see what it's future holds.

"It's dead, Jim."

Like I said before, and others have said too... marketing is only part of the puzzle. The product itself is a bigger reason it does well. And... the presence of other products on the market is something else they have to deal with.

Even if HP had the most amazing mind-blowing commercials... it was still competing against the iPad... a product that has been around for over a year.

What could HP have possibly said to make someone choose a TouchPad instead of the iPad... for the same price? What kind of marketing would that take?

It would take some pretty serious marketing, that's for sure. First it would be necessary to blunt Apple's marketing, then it would be necessary to create interest in what makes the HP Touchpad a viable alternative over an iPad. Both of those things would take a sustained marketing push.

At the end of the day, it would not be about the specs of the TouchPad, but stealing headlines and creating buzz. Had, for instance, HP had announced that for the next 200,000 (or whatever quantity was in the pipeline), they would lower the price by $10 a day until all units were gone, they could have grabbed the attention of anyone thinking of buying a tablet of any brand.

At first it would be like, "What?

When the price was $100 under the iPad and people were starting to talk about it on Facebook and Twitter, and developers were announcing that they were going to port this or that program over to webOS, there would be a flurry of interest. By the time it was $200 under the iPad there would be a nationwide scavenger hunt for remaining tablets.

Then they could release the second wave of products on the market for the price they should have started at...probably $100 under an iPad.

 

[mike693]

Yes!!!
This will have Google pulling their hair out.

If Android and WebOS are open source, then I imagine this is an opportunity for Google, MIUI, WebKit devs, and others to merge the best code (and eventually features) of both over time.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Touchpad didn't sell well at first, but did sell well during the fire sale. It sold so well, that it became the best selling Tablet other than the iPad.

There are no Touchpads in Bestbuy anymore.

Ah... so it was the firesale price that motivated TouchPad sales... not marketing, quality, etc.

Basically the only way to get people to buy the TouchPad was to sell it at an absurdly low price. (and HP did that to get rid of stock and fullfill commitments to their suppliers... not for some clever tactic)

And let's be clear... HP sold about 1 million TouchPads so far. Even Android tablets sold 5 million during that same time.

So far you've shown that the Palm Pre and the HP TouchPad can both claim some sort of "best-selling" title.

And look at where they are now. Palm was in bad shape and had to be acquired by HP... and HP scrapped the TouchPad and open-sourced WebOS.

For all your cheerleading about WebOS, Palm and the TouchPad... things still didn't turn out so well...

 

[mikefla]

HP is doing this because they realize that no innovation is going to come from their India programmers. If HP wasn't so greedy and cheap and actually invested in the US by having the programming work done here perhaps they could actually stand a chance against Apple's IOS or Google's Android. HP and Dell are one of India's largest employers if not the largest, did you know that? How about bringing some jobs to the US? We have the manpower and plenty of people unemployed but cheap companies like Dell and HP simply don't want to pay up and that's why they mass produce cheap junk that nobody wants!


-Mike