It's Not Qualcomm's Fault: Dispelling TouchPad Myths
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on August 19, 2011 6:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- HP
- Snapdragon
- OMAP
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- touchpad
- Mobile
webOS Needed Work
From the very beginning, webOS needed work in the optimization department. The hardware wasn't at fault, it was the software that always needed tuning, and as we saw with the Pre Plus even throwing more RAM at the problem didn't speed things up enough. We mentioned a number of places where webOS 2.0 still needed work to improve performance and smoothness in the Veer review. First among those really were the criminally long boot times:
"Unfortunately loading times on the Veer are still incredibly long due to some mismanagement of the linux boot process. Unfortunately it appears that WebOS increases the sleep time that apps send to the caller during the boot process from an already crazy 60 seconds to 120 seconds. There's discussion of this on WebOS Internals, but the situation is even worse now, at 120 seconds."
What Palm managed to develop was an excellent UI and front end to an OS, but there's little doubt that the underlying Linux code needed (and still needs) work. Simple tricks like disabling logging and implementing the boot process properly would result in noticeable performance gains. There's little dobut that other similar simple things could dramatically improve performance.
The fact of the matter is that Palm needed a lot of development time to turn webOS into a mature product. The HP of today is trying to turn itself into a fully focused enterprise company and as a result, webOS wasn't going to get the support it needed. An internal source at HP told me that the sales targets for the TouchPad were between the best selling Honeycomb tablets and the iPad. When that didn't happen, HP saw no reason to continue down the webOS hardware path.
As an enterprise company the move makes sense for HP and its shareholders. As consumers, we're disappointed. But the blame doesn't fall on Qualcomm or any chip vendor in the TouchPad, just on HP itself. The TouchPad needed more work, and webOS as a whole needs more work. You can either scale a project out by taking more time to get it done, or you can scale its width by committing more resources to it. The latter (and more efficient development) is what Palm has needed since day one, what HP promised to bring to it, and sadly exactly what it ultimately failed to receive at HP.
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Zink - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
Good job being though, I was kind of surprised at some of the stuff that got posted elsewhere .Zink - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
*thoroughHP never fully committed to fixing the OS and marketing that was already struggling in the hands of Palm so it is not really a surprise what happened.
Zink - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
I picked up an open box 16gb at futureshop in ontario for $89.99 and am using it right now. Try to snag one for $100 or $150 too. I don't really get it, why didn't they drop to $200, why go so low?piiman - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
are you complaining they made it too low? The only problem I see with them being 100.00 is they are flying off the shelf before I can get there. This may the the slowest pad out there but for 100.00 or less I bite!Watwatwat - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
because they burned the product which had already been failing, now who wants to buy that kind of discontinued failure for a small discount, you have to rip the bandaid off fast. it does them no good to drag it out, these things lose value by the day, and they need some money back asap, salvage what is left and be done with it. time is money, no time should be spent on a dead product line.Zoomer - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link
Not true, go look at ebay. People are buying them for alot more than $100. Given how fast they are selling at $100, HP could have priced them more, easy.Conclusion: That software guy is an idiot. Canning their pc division is a very risky move, considering it makes up about half their revenues. If this new direction fails, they are in deep shit. And enterprises usually wants to buy a package; how are they going to offer a package of servers + network + software + end clients (PCs) without their pc division?
boobot - Monday, August 29, 2011 - link
Here are a few facts from HPs earnings - The PC division of HP (PSG) makes up 29-30% of HPs revenue not 50%. IPG (printing) brings in 20% revenue and Services+ESSN(Servers) pulls in a hefty 45% of HP's revenue. That's revenue but more importantly the focus is on profit. PSG is only gathering 12-15% of HP's total profit(not bad but not it's core) and that is forecasted to shrink. IPG is pulling 28% of HP's total profits while Services+ESSN is pulling in 55% of HP's profits. PSG is potentially not getting "canned". They are optioning selling off or spinning off the PSG division. A spin-off would likely maintain the HP brand and be backed by HP. Either way it's a low profit and risky market. As for packages of services, yes it would be nice to sell the whole package but appartently other comanies such as IBM and Accenture even Oracle can sell services with hardware and not have a leg in the pc market. That's what HP is focusing on. The earnings are high and the profits follow. Not many people understand that HP is the second largest IT services company in the worldjavaflash - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
Mr. Anand Lal Shimpi has been behaving like a Quadcomm salesman for quite some time.There is a clear pattern of bias among his reviews where Quadcomm was always favored, and other chipmakers were marginalized even criticized.
I am concerned that there is an ulterior(financial) motive.
NCM - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
Then, Mr. javaflash, you'd better have some actual data, other than your unsupported opinion, to back that up.m.amitava - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
QuaDcomm?? LOL...