HP TouchPad, HP’s much hyped webOS tablet released in the US on July 1. The tablet has received mixed reviews. While the webOS 3.0 experience is great, the tablet performs shoddily at certain points.
Jon Rubenstein, Head of the Palm group within HP, sent out an email to all of his employees –webOS 3.0 developers and TouchPad engineers – telling them not to get discouraged by the initial reviews. He appreciated the webOS team for achieving “something extraordinary” in just a year’s time of working on the HP TouchPad and asked them to look at the reviews from the right perspective.
“If you’ve seen the recent TouchPad reviews you know that the industry understands HP’s vision and sees the same potential in webOS as we do. David Pogue from the New York Times says “there are signs of greatness here.” … You’ve also seen that reviewers rightly note things we need to improve about the webOS experience. The good news is that most of the issues they cite are already known to us and will be addressed in short order by over-the-air software and app catalog updates. We still have work to do to make webOS the platform we know it can be, but remember … it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Rubenstein reminded employees that Mac OS X had also received severe initial reviews. And look where it is today. He compared that to HP’s situation.
Hopefully, HP will follow up on its promises with quick updates. The HP TouchPad is good but we’d love to see some improvements in the next few weeks.
preCentral has received an HP product brief that shows HP has thought out its product launches over the next few months. Expect to see the dove white HP TouchPad next month with bumped up specs – 64GB storage space and possibly 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor. Then there’s AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network supporting HP TouchPad, also expected in August. Come fall, we could see “Opal,” the 7inch version of HP TouchPad. Not much is known about it except that it’ll be addressing users looking for a small pocket-sized version of the webOS tablet.
HP is encouraging sales of its 32GB HP TouchPad over the cheaper 16GB version because of limited availability and lower profit margin. And from what iSuppli tells us, HP is raking in quite a bit. According to the leading teardown analyst in consumer electronics, HP TouchPad WiFi 16GB’s components cost $307, almost a $200 profit margin. Of course, that’s not counting the cost of marketing, transport, research and development, and other logistics. Apparently, the costliest component is the IPS LG Display at $63.50. The component cost of the 32GB version is $328.
Looks like HP could make the tab thinner while retaining the same components. Perhaps it could make the tab cheaper at the same time?
[via crunchgear]
