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What Can (Should) We Learn from the HP $99 TouchPad Fire Sale?

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August 23, 2011
  • ReadWriteWeb journalist Dan Rowinski posted an interesting op-ed piece this week: “HP’s $99 TouchPad Fire Sale Can Teach Everybody A Lesson.”
  • “Tablets priced at $99 flying off the shelves and what had been a significant headline on Tuesday (Best Buy has 250,000 unsold TouchPads) had completely turned around on Sunday (Good Luck Finding a $99 TouchPad),” writes Rowinski. “It got me to thinking. As much as consumers love their Apple products and the iPad is a terrific device, consumers want something that is price efficient, even if it is a touch flawed. With literally hundreds of thousands of TouchPads sold over the weekend, a significant note should be playing in retailers’ and manufacturers’ heads — opportunities await for those willing to make a sacrifice.”
  • Rowinski speculates that an iPad killer is not in our immediate future. He also suggests that major changes are in the making with the browser-based mobile apps enabled by HTML5. He discusses tablets by Motorola, Samsung, HTC and Research In Motion and how price point may become as significant a factor as available apps. He addresses how Amazon learned valuable lessons with its Kindle and could possibly “recreate the Kindle furor by introducing a tablet into the market at $200 or less.”
  • “The great equalizer will be price,” writes Rowinski. “Amazon and to a certain extent Microsoft with Windows 8 have actually benefited from waiting to enter the tablet wars. They now see the battlefield in front of them and what it will take to make an impact. Quality devices with reasonable prices. Then turn and make money through value-added services.”

HP Update: We Say Farewell to TouchPad and WebOS

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August 22, 2011
  • HP has decided to end its recently launched TouchPad tablet and will take a $100 million loss on unsold inventory. (Interestingly, tech columnist Andy Ihnatko was getting ready to write a mixed but generally positive review of the TouchPad for the Chicago Sun-Times.)
  • Additionally, on the heels of the company announcing it would be integrating its webOS with smart appliances and other devices, HP now says there will be no more webOS phones. It did apparently leave the option open to licensing webOS to third parties.
  • In related news, AllThingsD reports that HP’s recent decision to stop the development of its webOS puts it’s personal computer business in a perilous position, and rumors are spreading as to what the company’s next step will be.
  • The most likely option involves a spin-off PC business as a separate company, much like Motorola did at the beginning of the year.
  • If HP decides to sell instead, it is likely that an Asian company will step forward to make the purchase — and the front-runner seems to be Samsung. The predicted price if a sale were to occur is placed at around $20 billion.

Google Acquires Motorola Mobility: Will Competition Really Increase?

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August 16, 2011
  • If you haven’t already seen the flood of reports online (including a number of related stories on ETCentric), Google announced it will acquire Motorola for $40 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion. The deal has led to a great deal of speculation this week regarding the future of the Android ecosystem and other enterprises such as Google TV.
  • “This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business,” stated Larry Page in the official Google blog. “Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.”
  • Page believes the acquisition will also serve as a buffer to anti-competitive patent attacks on Android: “Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”
  • This deal raises a number of compelling questions (see thoughts by Robert Scoble, Peter Kafka and others in the related posts listed below), but first I have to ask: Can Google have its “open platform” and compete with its licensees too?

Tablet War: Can Anyone Compete with the iPad?

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August 15, 2011
  • You’re probably tired of reading about it, but as the tablet wars continue it seems little traction can be made against Apple’s market leader. The Wall Street Journal offers the latest look at the iPad’s impact.
  • HP announced it will lower its price on the TouchPad by 20 percent, only a month after the tablet hit the shelves. Motorola cut the price of its Xoom tablet following the February launch and offered a cheaper model, with little response.
  • Samsung has stopped reporting how many Galaxy Tabs they are shipping — and is now stuck in a patent dispute with Apple that threatens its European sales.
  • Motorola and RIM don’t say how many tablets they have sold and, as recently reported on ETCentric, RIM’s PlayBook is in carrier trouble since Sprint Nextel pulled its support.
  • Meanwhile, Apple has sold some 28.7 million iPads since April 2010. According to WSJ, Apple “says it is having difficulty keeping up with demand and selling every iPad it can manufacture. Five months after its release, its iPad 2 can be hard to find in retail stores. The company said it shipped 9.3 million iPads in the June-ended quarter.”
  • Despite price changes, many consumers seem to view the iPad as the tablet leader and others as imitators. As a result, the tablet market is essentially divided into two sectors at this point — Apple’s iPad…and everyone else.
  • Do any of our readers have a different take on this trend? Does anyone recommend using a tablet other than the iPad?

Motorola Televation Streams Live TV Slingbox-Style

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June 15, 2011
  • At the 2011 Cable Show in Chicago this week, Motorola Mobility showcased a new Slingbox-style device that allows customers to stream live TV to connected devices within range of their home network.
  • Motorola Televation, a broadband device that works with a Wi-Fi router, was developed with engineers from Comcast (the cable provider is also demoing Televation at the Cable Show).
  • Televation uses a 1GHz digital tuner and CableCard to access channels directly from a coax outlet and real-time transcoding of live MPEG-2 TV broadcasts into MPEG-4 IP streams for devices such as Android and iOS tablets, IP-connected TVs, etc.
  • “Consumers love entertainment, and want easy access to TV no matter where they are in the home. Coupled with the explosive popularity of tablet devices, this represents a terrific opportunity for MSOs to increase customer satisfaction while generating new revenue,” explains John Burke, senior VP and GM, Converged Experiences, Motorola Mobility. “Televation gives our customers the ability to launch a new service that puts innovation back into TV, enabling their subscribers to enjoy TV beyond the TV.”

PlayBook Outsells Motorola Xoom in its First Month

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May 23, 2011

Research In Motion has had an interesting month. ETCentric’s story submission stream has featured a number of PlayBook-related stories in recent weeks… from the tablet’s weak initial launch — to the unfortunate recall of 1,000 units due to faulty operating systems — to the news that it had surprisingly sold 250,000 units during its first month of availability. In fact, despite mixed reviews and April’s slow launch, RIM’s PlayBook managed to outsell the Motorola Xoom in its first month.

In April, initial reports indicated a disappointing launch, with many units reportedly remaining on shelves during the first days of availability. Many reports credited the ongoing success of Apple’s iPad and the current lack of apps made for the PlayBook. Reuters reported: “RIM, which has priced the PlayBook to match the iPad, has struggled to win consumer fans since Apple’s iPhone and a slew of devices running Google’s Android entered the smartphone fray.”

Less than one month later, reports circulated that RIM had recalled approximately 1,000 units that were shipped with what the Wall Street Journal described as, “faulty operating systems which may have prevented users from performing the initial setup of the device.” The recall fell on the heels of RIM issuing a first-quarter profit warning, after citing lower-than-expected BlackBerry sales.

Yet not all news was negative. By the third week of May, RBC Capital Markets reported that the PlayBook had sold 250,000 units in its first month (it took Motorola’s Xoom two months to reach the same numbers). If the pace of PlayBook sales remains consistent, RIM will sell over 2 million units this year (slightly less than most analysts’ sales estimates for the tablet).

Of course, these numbers don’t come close to iPad sales, so the question remains: Is there a current tablet that is ready to compete with Apple’s iPad (at least in the near term)?

Related Reuters article: “RIM launches PlayBook but fans don’t play along” (4/19/11)

Related Wall Street Journal article: “RIM Recalls 1,000 PlayBook Tablets” (5/16/11)

Related BGR Media post: “250,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets sold to date, RBC says” (5/18/11)

Related Wired review: “BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Lacks All the Right Moves” (4/13/11)

Related CNET review: “BlackBerry PlayBook review: A great surprise” (4/13/11)

Related SmartBlog post: “Will PlayBook play nice in the cloud?” (5/23/11)

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