When you think of major success in the tablet world, you certainly don’t think of HP in the same breathe. From Windows tablets to their failed WebOS HP TouchPad, HP hasn’t had a lot of luck in the very lucrative mobile market. That’s not stopping them from jumping all in and shifting their attention from the PC industry over to the tablet industry.

The first step in this direction is the modest HP Slate 7, a $169 budget tablet that is catchy enough in the looks department but under the hood? You are probably better off spending a few extra bucks and getting a Nexus 7.

Okay, one tablet does not a directional shift make. So where is the proof that HP is slowly shifting away from the PC? The proof is directly from HP’s CEO Meg Whitman, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, “We’re shifting resources from PCs to tablets. The market moved very fast to tablets and smartphones, and we’ve got to now manage that transition.”

“And it’s not that HP didn’t try to manage that transition — they did with the acquisition of Palm. But as you know under the previous [management] that took a little detour to nowhere.” Meg also spoke about how quality with their upcoming devices is going to be an important focus area, and ends by stating, “Innovation is not dead at this company. So, what I did is I increased RD spending…we have to get these products that are close to market to market fast,” she said.

Can HP finally find success with mobile devices?

That’s a great question, and one with no easy answer. Let’s take a look at both the company’s Windows and Android efforts and where they stand.

Windows 8 Tablets

In the Windows 8 world, HP’s current offerings are solid enough, but not exactly exciting. Nor or they really particularly innovative or different from the crowd. They have the hardware, but Windows 8 PCs and tablets from Lenovo, Dell, Asus and Microsoft seem to be taking more of the attention at this point.

Of course this could change. If HP truly is cranking up the quality, innovation and overall effort, perhaps we could see more from their next generation Windows 8 offerings?

Android Tablets

Okay, what about Android? When the HP TouchPad firesold for just $99, it did excellent.

Many of these  buyers then turned around loaded up Android once it was properly ported to the hardware. This is probably why HP went after the low-end with the HP Slate 7. The problem was that targeting the low-end WAS an excellent idea back then. In fact, HP’s sales of the TouchPad at discount probably inspired many of the companies selling $250 (and lower) tablets today. Unfortunately, HP waited too long.

The low-end market is crowded and with Google unafraid of selling its Nexus devices at-cost, it is hard to compete here. The HP Slate 7 is a good start, but I just don’t see it gaining major traction. Of course it does have brand recognition and many consumers buying a tablet for the first time will recognize HP even over names like Asus.

What about the mid and high-end? On the mid and high-end, Android has to fight against the iPad and now even Windows 8 devices. This is an equally crowded space. That said, rumors indicate HP is working on an Nvidia Tegra 4 tablet that could have some serious oomph. If they market it right, it could certainly appeal to some.

Conclusion: It’s an uphill battle, that’s for sure.

None of HP’s tablet efforts on the low, high or mid-end (Windows 8, Android or otherwise) seem to have enough hype to sell like hotcakes alone, but is that the only way to find success? Part of HP’s success in the PC world is attributed to the fact that it has a wide range of different devices that reach the low, mid and high end crowd at very competitive pricing.

No one tablet by HP will probably generate the hype or sales to take on the iPad, Kindle Fire or Nexus 7. But combined? That’s probably the strategy that HP is banking on, though its unclear at this point if it will be enough. HP also needs to tread carefully.

HP is currently the best-selling PC manufacturer, and while it is fine to transfer some of their attention to developing the tablet market and away from the PC, they also need to remember their roots and the fact that the PC is their primary source of bread and butter. The world is heading towards mobile devices and HP is wise to head in that direction as well, but it won’t be easy.

What do you think of HP’s tablet efforts? Can they finally find a wider range of success in the tablet world?

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The HP TouchPad is a curious device, to say the least. It is hard to call it anything other than a failure, but it has certainly managed a fairly successful life after death, thanks in part to 2011 fire-sales of the unit by companies like Best Buy, combined with the flexibility of its hardware.

So what makes the HP TouchPad a favorite among tinkerers? The flexibility to run multiple operating systems, outside of its intended WebOS. Using a boot manager program called Moboot, many users have successfully created dual-boots between WebOS and Android. The interesting thing about the tablet is that there has been success with installing both Android 2.3 and Android 4.0 ICS.

Taking things a step further though, xda-developers forum member MikeyCriggz has posted instructions for taking a TouchPad that’s already running Android and webOS and adding Arch Linux to the mix. You’ll need Moboot installed, but the guide walks you through the process of adding Arch Linux to your tablet and adding it to the boot menu as well.

Arch is still a little rough around the edges though, with a lack of mic, camera, and sound support. Bluetooth doesn’t work either. Still, you have to applaud HP for creating such an interesting and flexible tablet. Too bad the company didn’t see the potential for the device that many in the hacker and developer communities have.

[ source ]

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To be fair, the open source Open webOS 1.0 isn’t exactly ready for primetime yet, but HP is dedicated to it. The current timeline calls for a completion of the open source project by September, but there will be updates along the way that will get you that much closer to the final product.

Going along with this development is the release of Enyo, the application framework that was used with webOS 3.0 and the HP TouchPad. That’s available to devs and hackers right now. In fact, a complete refresh called Enyo 2.0 is also in the works and it will not be tied to Webkit at all. This means that developers can create apps that are fully browser-independent, working just fine in everything from IE to Firefox to Chrome. For Open webOS 1.0, they’re also making a switch to a standard Linux kernel, not unlike what you get with Google Android.

Check out the proposed timeline above. While the beta builds for devs will get rolled out every month or so, regular end users won’t get their official hands on a version of Open webOS 1.0 until “late summer.” That may include webOS devices beyond the TouchPad too, like the Pre, Pixi, Veer series and who knows, maybe a TouchPad Go.

[ source ]

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Recently, Android Community has calculated the total sales of tablets from January up until October. According to their figures, HP Touchpad took the second place for overall tablet sales. This is to say that the HP Touchpad is the best selling tablet among non-Apple products. Android Community tends to attribute the HP Touchpad popularity to the existence of an Android port for it: CyanogenMod 7 Alpha. An upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich Sandwich port will render HP Touchpad even more powerful and versatile.

However, the true reason for such a success is quite simple: an August fire sale  of HP Touchpads at $99 and $149 price points. They were all running webOS back then (except for couple devices that slipped to retail having Qualcomm’s developer versions of Android 2.2).

Do these figures (estimated at 200,000 units) indicate webOS popularity then? No. It might be a different story though if HP decided to release a new tablet some time in 2012 running WebOS. Right now it seems likely that HP will make the switch to Windows 8 on their tablets, though Android is a possibility as well.

A hypothetical tablet based on Qualcomm’s SoC could possibly give webOS another chance at the market. If HP were to take its almost finished HP TouchPad GO tablets to the market, there would be another opportunity for WebOS to shine as well. Unfortunately, this is all speculation and it looks like HP just doesn’t have any interest in keeping WebOS alive, despite its heavy investment.

HP Touchpad might stay as a sales champion now, but not for very long, as holiday sales will show a major increase for Kindle Fires and NOOK Tablets and iPads too. Amazon and Barnes and Noble certainly hope so, at least.

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Thanks to a fire sale on the HP TouchPad from pretty much every major retailer, someone went home with a special TouchPad – it’s running Android 2.2. There are currently two YouTube videos posted of the unique tablet, and the device flashes a Qualcomm Innovation Center (Quic) logo so it looks like it was a development project that accidentally mixed up with the fire sale models.

The buyer decided to sell it on eBay, and at the time of this post the current bid was $1,275. HacknMod is also offering a reward of $2,225 as of this posting for a successful port of Android to the TouchPad.

However, more than one person has received a special Android-running TouchPad. Shahzeb Jiwani has also come into possession of an HP TouchPad running Android 2.2… and to the delight of developers and the Android community, he’s decided to make a ROM dump available on RootzWiki, so everyone who owns one of the $99 tablets can run Android on their tablet.

The files are available for download and the port of Android 2.2, 2.3, and maybe even 3.0 Honeycomb will get a little head start.

Check out Jiwani’s TouchPad running Android in his own video.

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First, this isn’t just a regular TouchPad; it’s the HP TouchPad 4G. That signifies connectivity with AT&T’s 4G network. Unfortunately, it’s 4G as in HSPA+ and not 4G as in LTE. Secondly, they’ve bumped the processor from the stock 1.2GHz unit to a faster 1.5GHz CPU.

I imagine that’ll give you an edge in performance, but it might bite away at the battery life. Rounding out the feature set are the same things you find on the regular TouchPad, like the 9.7-inch display, GPS, and 32GB of storage. Pricing and availability have not yet been revealed, but if they want to stay competitive, the TouchPad 4G can’t come at much (or any) of a premium over the regular one. I don’t think it’s the speed or connectivity that’ll hurt the TouchPad 4G; it’s the relative lack of apps in the HP App Catalog.

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The announcement a couple days ago of the new Apple iPad 2 did two very important things. First, it allowed Steve Jobs to appear in public, taking the stage despite his medical leave. Second, it laid to rest all the rumored specs about the second-generation tablet by showing off what it really was. Unfortunately for Apple, “what it really was” was lacking.

Chris Taylor of Mashable has a special article up on CNN that points out the things that “Apple hopes you didn’t notice about iPad 2.” The article doesn’t go quite as far as the Conan O’Brien roast last night (seriously, you need to watch that vid), but it does confirm that the iPad 2 isn’t nearly as groundbreaking as Cupertino would lead you to believe.

First, despite selling its “seamless” interface, the iPad 2 still needs you to use that sync cable to sync your music and videos via iTunes. Could they have not made it sync to the cloud a little easier? Second, while there’s a faster A5 processor in the second iPad, it still has the same 256MB of RAM as the original. That’s not exactly a performance boost. Remember that both the Xoom and HP TouchPad have 1GB of RAM each.

Other shortcomings? No improvement in the screen resolution, no mention of megapixels for the rear camera, and mono speakers. I’m not saying that the iPad 2 is a bad product, per se, but it only represents some really tiny baby steps compared to the first one. Bring on the Android army, I say.

The post The Significant Apple iPad 2 Shortcomings appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

When news first broke out that HP was buying Palm, we got stoked about webOS getting a huge injection of infrastructure and marketing muscle. What we didn’t know was how far HP was going to use its newly acquired property.

Going beyond the Palm Pre smartphones and the HP PalmPad TouchPad tablet, it seems that HP wants to extend webOS beyond the mobile market into printers, computers, and more. Remember that printers represent a huge part of HP’s business. How awesome would it be to have a webOS interface on your multi-function rather than the commonly clunky menus that plague just about the entire segment?

I’m not at all convinced on the use of webOS on a notebook or desktop, though, as it seems too lightweight for these kinds of applications. That is, unless they plan on using webOS as the “quick boot” environment instead of the Linux-based stuff that we see from the other PC guys?

[BGR via HP]

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The HP TouchPad has been announced today at the HP/Palm Think Beyond webOS event. It’s the companies first jointly created tablet to run purely on the webOS platform, and the first of a family of slate devices to emerge into the market.

The TouchPad is a 9.7-inch 1024×768 multitouch slate measuring just 13.7mm thick and weighing 1.5lbs. It will have a “bright display” for easy viewing indoors and outdoors. Video calling support with a 1.3 megapixel webcam, 802.11 B/G/N, 16/32GB storage space, 1GB of RAM, with a dual-core 8660 1.2Ghz CPU. Gyro, accelerometer and compass, but no barometer.

The packaged software will be Google Docs, QuickOffice, Dropbox, box.net and VPN. A virtual keyboard with number row should be popular. A bunch of configuration options for email, from single panel, dual and triple panel inbox control. Multitasking is “true multitasking” and a lot more. This version is Wi-Fi only, with a 3G version coming later on. No pricing information as of yet, expect a “summer” release.

[Pre Central, Mashable]

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