The TouchPad Hewlett-Packard is betting its elegant system to compete against Apple WebOS, but its software business may not offset a poor range of applications. From today there will be another computer tablet on the market: the TouchPad Hewlett-Packard . The new board is trying to compete with Apple's iPhone and is the first of many devices come with WebOS system.
However, although the operating system of the TouchPad WebOS (which HP inherited the company after it acquired Palm in 2010) is elegant and even in some ways superior to the iPhone is unlikely to have the success that HP expected. Why? Because consumers do not want tablets , want iPads.
HP can not compete with Apple fashion, and certainly does not compete with the price (like the iPhone 2, the initial price of the TouchPad is $ 500). Nor can it compete with the wealth offered by the Apple App Store, the catalog of applications for the TouchPad contains only 300 apps. Instead, the iPhone users have access to more than 100,000 applications.
The developers have released massively create games, productivity tools and other applications for phones and tablets IOS. And more recently have created applications for devices running the Google Android system. This is because the developers want to build for platforms popular with users. With nearly 25 million Cases sold to date, to create applications for Apple slates has obvious advantages: a large and growing audience ready to download these small, colorful icons on the screens of their computers.
HP says, for its part, the number of applications available for TouchPad "changes every day." The company also has emphasized that its range of applications has more to do with the quality, not quantity. To that end, HP has launched Pivot, which he describes as "an editorial resource to find information and entertainment for the TouchPad WebOS applications from HP." In other words, is like an online magazine that highlights some applications for users. HP knows, as does the number of applications in the App Store and Android Market, find the right one can be tricky.
And this is confirmed by a recent study by research firm in the technology sector Canalys , which revealed that these huge application pools can overwhelm consumers. "If a consumer is looking for an application of climate on the Android Market store, for example, will find many possibilities, many of which have not been rated by the users nor received comments," the authors of the report.
There will, no doubt, diehard fans of Palm willing to pay $ 500 for a touch pad instead of an iPhone, despite the lack of applications. And while criticism of the tablet from HP have been heterogeneous, many in the tech world have spoken wonders of the WebOS system.
WebOS does many things well. For one, its multitasking function is better than the iPhone, allowing users to keep multiple applications open at once. It also has a feature called Synergy , which concentrates the data from multiple contact lists (such as Facebook and Skype) in a single schedule (also collects different versions of online calendars and photo sharing services several images).
But will that be enough for the TouchPad to attract a significant number of consumers and developers? I doubt it. HP has come late to the game of the tablets , and the mass market does not care about the new features of an operating system, cares about what is fashionable. Despite the proliferation of other devices, Apple still dominates the market for tablets .
However, HP has big plans for WebOS beyond the market of electronic whiteboards. That's why we paid 1.200 million dollars for Palm, the creator of the system. HP WebOS ready to install on multiple devices (from printers to computers), so although the TouchPad does not sweep away his rivals, WebOS could well become a great competitor IOS and Android systems.
