Considering the failure of HP\u2019s WebOS powered TouchPad, and RIM\u2019s Blackberry tablet, one could consider that there is no space for other contenders behind Apple\u2019s iPad and Google\u2019s Android OS.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that I agree.<\/p>\n
The executives of HP and RIM were naive at best, and plain stupid at worst.<\/p>\n
RIM\u2019s tablet could do basic functions like email and calendar without being paired with a Blackberry phone.\u00a0 That shrunk the market radically.\u00a0 Version 2 would be better was the promise, then why the hell did you release version 1?\u00a0 I listened to The Guardian\u2019s Tech Weekly webcast last week and a RIM executive was being hammered by a fairly mild journalist.\u00a0 Even RIM\u2019s employees are rebelling against the morons who are drunkenly steering that ship.<\/p>\n
Then over in HP land we have a who other class of maroon.\u00a0 HP went and bought WebOS, the successor to PalmOS and declared to the world that it would be their tablet and phone OS.\u00a0 Hello?\u00a0 Is anyone there in 1996?\u00a0 Is the Macarena still number 1 in the music charts back there?\u00a0 WebOS went on \u201csale\u201d and it turns out that no one wanted it.\u00a0 The Pre3 phone was unwanted by any of the networks, and went on sale this week in Europe with no announcements.\u00a0 Sales were so bad that HP terminated WebOS operations last night.<\/p>\n
Where did it go wrong?\u00a0 Both HP and RIM were convinced that they could use their corporate and government market penetration to drive huge sales.\u00a0 There\u2019s 2 issues with that.<\/p>\n
Consumerisation of IT<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The IT department is not driving the sale of tablets in the business.\u00a0 IT admins hate supporting them because they don\u2019t fit in with anything.\u00a0 The end consumer is driving the use of the iPad at work; they want something friendly, light, and an experience that they can share with their friends\/family.\u00a0 Some stodgy business tool is not in their buying plans.<\/p>\n Applications<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Imagine you bought a PC and could not run any applications.\u00a0 How would doing business with Notepad work for you?\u00a0 Not well, I\u2019d expect.\u00a0 But HP and RIM expected you to use their platforms with no app ecosystem.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t encourage an app developer community.\u00a0 That impacts things generally.\u00a0 But let\u2019s dig deeper.<\/p>\n Are Microsoft Discouraged?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Hell no!\u00a0 If anything, this proves something:\u00a0 if the business is going to embrace tablet technology then they want an application platform, and they want it to be hardware agnostic.\u00a0 If I develop and use some app on a Toshiba tablet, I want to make sure that my colleague in Paris that has a Sony tablet can work with me.\u00a0 If I use a Toshiba OS and they use a Sony OS, then we cannot collaborate.\u00a0 Sure there\u2019s \u201cthe cloud\u201d and web based apps, but we no that things aren\u2019t really that simple; they should be but they aren\u2019t.\u00a0 And the PC isn\u2019t dead; I sure don\u2019t want to use a tablet 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.\u00a0 If I run a PC then I also want to use the same apps.<\/p>\n Windows 8 accomplishes this.\u00a0 It will be hardware manufacturer agnostic.\u00a0 It will give us the same HTML5 and Javascript OS platform across laptop, PC, tablet, and even netbook.\u00a0 Wave 15 (Office and SharePoint vNext) even will support HTML5 and Javascript.<\/p>\n I think (this morning) that true<\/em> tablet PCs will go through an evolution process.\u00a0 Evolution looks unkindly at specialists.\u00a0 When the environment changes, the specialist dies out.\u00a0 Windows is like a fox; it is a true generalist, found almost everywhere, always able to adapt because it runs on so many vendors hardware and platforms, and suits the needs of so many.<\/p>\n RIM\u2019s and HP\u2019s tablets were true evolutionary mistakes.\u00a0 What I do find surprising it that the executives or designers of either corporation were deluded, drunk or stoned enough to think that either of these tablets had a snowball\u2019s chance in hell to succeed.\u00a0 If I was a shareholder, I\u2019d be considering suing them for negligence and demanding my money back.<\/p>\n EDIT:<\/p>\n I should have wrapped this up. \u00a0I believe that if Microsoft doesn’t screw up Windows 8 on ARM, in other words, if it is good enough to keep users happy, then it’s\u00a0manageability and\u00a0it’s shared application platform with the PC will make it the winner in the business that HP and RIM desired and failed to achieve with their Dodos.<\/p>\n Considering the failure of HP\u2019s WebOS powered TouchPad, and RIM\u2019s Blackberry tablet, one could consider that there is no space for other contenders behind Apple\u2019s iPad and Google\u2019s Android OS.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that I agree. The executives of HP and RIM were naive at best, and plain stupid at worst. RIM\u2019s tablet could do … Continue reading “Do the HP & RIM Tablet Failures Impact on Windows 8?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[180,109],"class_list":["post-11515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-desktop","tag-hardware","tag-windows-8"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t