HP has a brand new tablet that has not been launched yet, but I suspect it could very well be the one tablet that gives Apple a run for their money and one that could very quickly become the #2 tablet in the world. If anything holds it back, it could be applications.Hewlett Packard is a rat cunning company that avoids the big glam PR events and fluffy launch functions, instead getting on with the job of flogging a lot of PCs, printers and high-end enterprise technology.
Along the way they have gobbled up the likes of Digital and Compaq, who used to be the #1 PC company, and a small software company that made a very clever smartphones and organisers called Palm.
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The Palm phone offering was one of the very first smartphones, the only problem was that they lacked the mountains of cash that the likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple had to develop their own smartphone offerings.
On July 1, HP will launch a tablet that runs the company’s new Web OS which has been developed by a team of engineers who came with their Palm aquisition.
The new HP tablet is powered by a Qualcomm chip which is wrapped around the new HP Web OS software, which, when bundled into a Palm smartphone, was extremely close to what Apple was delivering in the iPhone.
The reason for this is that a lot of the people at Palm came from Apple, including John Rubinstein who helped to create the iPod and the iMac.
Rubenstein, who became the CEO of Palm before it was bought by HP, knows how Apple thinks and, above all, market their products. He knows that to beat Apple the software in the new Web OS tablet has to hit a sweet spot with consumers. He is banking on Google Android devices becoming “me too” with over 40 manufacturers already struggling to differentiate their tablet offering from their competitors.
During a recent BusinessWeek interview at Hewlett-Packard, Todd Bradley, the head of the $41 billion PC group said the Windows era was over. He said that HP had no choice but to distance itself from the Microsoft-Intel ecosystem.
He admits that the new HP TouchPad is part of a big gamble that began last year with HP’s $1.3 billion purchase of Palm and webOS.
BW said that for this bet to pay off, HP needs a tech trifecta. First, webOS devices must offer Apple-like simplicity, built on top of loads of applications and content. It won’t be easy, but HP could quickly out-distance most IPad rivals, including tablets running Google’s Android operating system.
One of the unlock keys is that HP will own the software and the hardware design. Unlike hardware manufacturers like Acer who failed to make their first Android tablet compatible with Microsoft’s Outlook or Exchange, HP will, like Apple, will be able to control both the hardware design and software functionality.
This gives the company a huge design advantage, says Tim Bajarin, president of tech consultancy Creative Strategies.
“They at least are trying to control their destiny, while all the others are putting it in the hands of Google or Microsoft,” Bajarin says.
Inside the new tablet are some very clever software offerings that differentiate this tablet form both the iPad and what Google is offering with Android.
A webOS feature called Synergy lets developers design applications that talk to each other. Facebook friends’ birthdays automatically show up in your contacts. Work and personal calendars, even those of a partner, appear together.
Users can make a call using their wireless carrier or Skype, without having to open separate applications. “The concept from the very beginning of this is, “Your life is moving to the cloud,” says Jon Rubinstein, who helped create the iMac and iPod at Apple before becoming chief executive officer of Palm.
The weakness is that the TouchPad will launch with only 300 tablet-specific applications. The iPad has over 80,000 iPad-specific applications.
BW said that a recommendation engine will make it easier to discover new apps. Users who like cooking might see Epicurious pop up on their suggested list. “We’ll come out of the gates behind, but I’m really confident we’ll catch up,” says Bradley.
A big market that HP is targeting is the business enterprise market. With their 20,000-plus global sales force, the company has a good shot at landing corporate customers, Bajarin says. To sell to consumers, he says HP will have to train Best Buy and 600,000 other dealers to show customers the glories of webOS.
HP has already started talking to retailers like Harvey Norman and JB Hi Fi.
In the USA, HP has paid retailers to set up its own section within stores and is dispatching several hundred employees to demonstrate the product at retail this July, says Stephen DeWitt, Personal Systems Group senior vice-president. HP is spending hundreds of millions on an ad blitz starring Jay-Z and other celebrities.
Bradley and Rubinstein say that if the TouchPad’s reception is lukewarm initially, they’ll be patient.
“We have a really good opportunity to become No. 2 in tablets fairly quickly,” Rubinstein says. “Possibly No. 1.”
