Hewlett-Packard

Friday Grab Bag: HP is Back!

October 28, 2011 by Greg Quick 2 Comments

ViewSonic offers low cost Android tablet
Looking for a low cost tablet? Well ViewSonic wants you to know that it is now in the game with its ViewPad 7e Android tablet. The 7-inch display uses an older version of Android and not the more recent Honeycomb version of the OS but it does have a $200 price tag and includes a 1GHz ARM A8 processor, dual cameras and 4GB storage with a microSD card slot for expansion.

Dodgers blame beating victim
I know that blame the victim is a standard tactic in legal matters but do the Dodgers really believe that they can convince any rational person that Bryan Stow, beaten into a coma at Opening Day at Dodgers Stadium was responsible? It sure looks as if they are going to as part of the owners’ battle with MLB. It couldn’t be the funding siphoned from the team to support the owners’ expensive lifestyle, could it?

ESPN teams with Nokia for sports fans
ESPN has teamed with smartphone developer Nokia to offer a mobile sports technology for the fan on the go. Called the ESPN Hub and slated for release in 2012 it has been specifically designed for the latest generation of Nokia smartphones that run Microsoft Windows operating system. The ESPN Hub will have a different look from other ESPN products and the company claims that it will help make navigation of content smoother and more intuitive. Hopefully this will turn out better than the Mobile ESPN effort from a few years ago.

HP- We are back! Will not leave the hardware business after all.
Hewlett-Packard back in the hardware business, gee we hardly missed you. The company has made an about turn and has decided that it will not spin off its personal computer unit after all. The decision was made by CEO Meg Whitman. The move reverses the proposal put forward by Whitman’s predecessor, ousted CEO Leo Apotheker who announced the move as part of a corporate overhaul. AT the time the company was smarting over the poor sales of its tablet computer, the TouchPad. It now looks like future tablets are in store for the company, but may use the Microsoft OS.

iPad 3 to sport new connectors?
Rumor du jour: C|Net is reporting the possibility that Apple will launch an iPad3 in March and that it might have connector issues. The site, citing another site, reports that it will have a redesigned dock connector that uses the same number of pins as the old one but in a different, and smaller, configuration. The screen is expected to remain the same size and there is now word if it will stay at the current resolution level or move to the Retina Display technology already in use in other Apple products.

Can teams be a bit too touchy about Twitter?
The recent tempest in a teapot comes from Boston where New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski felt obligated to apologize for appearing in photos with BiBi Jones, an adult film star who then posted them on Twitter. It was taken during a bye week and he is free to do as he feels. I wonder how long it will be before Puritan in Chief Roger Goodell issues a ruling on what players can do in their free time?

Filed Under: Android, Apps, ESPN, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Tablets, Twitter Tagged With: ESPN, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nokia, smart, Tablet, Twiiter, ViewSonic

HP First to Fail in Tablet Space

August 19, 2011 by Greg Quick 4 Comments

Hewlett-Packard has indicated that it is departing the PC business and it looks to jettison its TouchPad tablet device as well. The company said that it will focus on its strategic priorities of cloud, solutions and software with an emphasis on enterprise, commercial and government market. One of the early pioneers in the PC space this move is probably a sign, much like IBM’s departure from this space a few years back, that the overall market is both mature and changing.

Most mature markets see a reduction in the number of suppliers, and as Scott McNealy, once CEO of Sun Microsystems said years back, the PC industry is now just a distribution system for Intel and Microsoft. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs recently said that the issue with a number of the tablet makers is that they are touting speeds and feeds, just like in the PC’s heyday, rather than focusing on tight integration of hardware and software and seamless user experience.

Yet it was just two months ago that HP released its TouchPad tablet, to poor reviews and reports of very poor sales, it should be noted. Built on the WebOS operating system it gained via its $1.2bn purchase of Palm last year, it looks like it is flushing all of that away. There are reports that the company has sold just a fraction of its already built tablets, compared with Apple’s estimated 9 million plus in the last quarter.

For tablet users it means one less offering, and for developers’ one less operating system that they might have to consider. It is likely that the market will break down to two major operating systems, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, probably leaving Blackberry and any others out in the cold. Currently market researchers are predicting that Apple will maintain the lion’s share of the market for the next few years and then the Android wave will overtake them. This is a market that, according to market research firm Informa, will experience a ten fold growth by 2015, with an estimated about 87 million Android tablets sold in 2015, compared with 90 million iPads, according to the estimate.

Remind anybody of the PC market? For HP, think they might spin off the business? I have a good name for it, Compaq.

Filed Under: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, Top News Tagged With: Android, Apple, BlackBerry, Hewlett-Packard, IBM iOS

Hewlett-Packard Seeks Results from Palm Purchase with TouchPad Tablet

June 29, 2011 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

Hewlett-Packard is on the verge of releasing the TouchPad tablet as it seeks to stake out a section of the increasingly competitive tablet market and show that its costly purchase of Palm will pay solid dividends.

HP will be following the Apple roadmap in supplying both the hardware and operating system for its tablet, something that the Android and Windows-based systems are not able to do, but the question will be if it can copy Apple’s success or is it too little too late?

Right now there are five operating systems that come to mind in this market, Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows, HP’s webOS and Blackberry’s Tablet OS. That is probably too many for all to profit and just like the PC operating system system wars of a few decades ago several will most likely not make it long term. Most app developers have limited resources and will select the platforms that they believe will deliver the fastest an best return on investment, and this will hurt HP, at least in the near term.

The HP pad device has very similar specifications to Apple’s iPad, but they seem just a little off – a little heavier with a battery that is a little larger, and right now very little in the way of applications although the technology it is using is familiar to many since it came to the company as part of its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm last year.

The TouchPad will be available in a $499 16GB and a $599 32GB version. The device features a 9.7-inch XGA, multitouch screen with 1024×768 resolution display, a front-facing 1.3 megapixel webcam, and has Wi-Fi support. It is 7.48 inches wide and 9.45 inches tall is .54-inches thick and weights 1.6 lbs. It is powered by Qualcomm’s 1.2GHz dual core Snapdragon processor. The TouchPad is designed to be used in conjunction with other Touchstone devices such as the Pre and so a user can transfer websites between devices, among other features.

While the interoperability between the tablet and phone is nice, there does not seem to be that much that really differentiates the TouchPad from the host of Android devices or the iPad family. Both of its better established rivals have tens of thousands of apps ready while the TouchPad has a few hundred. Having control of both hardware and OS development can lead to greater overall system integration, it also means that there is no shared development cost, all is carried by HP, a model that has hurt many companies in the past. HP is going to face a huge uphill battle to establish itself as a major player in this market and its first offerings does not appear to break any new ground, something that should be worrisome for the company.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, BlackBerry, iPad Tagged With: Android, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, iOS, Tablets

Friday Grab Bag: HP is Back!

HP First to Fail in Tablet Space

Hewlett-Packard Seeks Results from Palm Purchase with TouchPad Tablet

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Search the MSR Site

e-reports