Hewlett-Packard (HP) is getting into the tablet arena, with the HP TouchPad making its debut on July 1st. The tablet runs the highly-touted WebOS and matches many of the iPad's features, such as a 9.7 inch display and a $499.99 price tag for the 16 GB Wi-Fi version. But is it enough to compete with the iPad?
In a word: no.
The tablet market is not the same as the smartphone market, despite many tablets running on a smartphone operating system. Most people need a phone. Most people do not need a tablet. Most people will use their smartphone primarily to place phone calls, while a tablet's use may vary between watching movies, playing games or browsing the web. This creates a different set of criteria for buying a tablet computer.
But the main reason why the HP TouchPad's climb to the top of the mountain will fail is that it simply doesn't have a good path to follow.
The iPad didn't blow the doors off the tablet market simply because it was a sexy device that had legions of Apple drones lined up to buy it. The iPad's success rested on a wildly popular app store, giving the iPad the foundation to be a fun and useful device to have around the home.
The iPad's primary competition -- Android-based tablets -- has a path to the top. They are being sold by numerous manufacturers, which gives Android the advantage of numbers, and the Android Marketplace has been steadily growing over the past two years. Android also got a boost when Amazon stepped into the arena, creating the Amazon Appstore to sell Android apps, with a rumored Amazon tablet possibly coming in the future.
And even RIM's PlayBook has a path to the top, albeit obstructed by a lot of bushes and rocks. The BlackBerry certainly has a lot of inroads with corporations, which could give it a leg up with those companies wishing to dip their toes in the tablet waters.
Palm certainly had its fans, but they weren't enough to keep the company from being swallowed by HP. And while WebOS may be a very sophisticated operating system, that alone won't be enough to gain traction in a market where even powerful Android-based tablets with the support of the second-most popular app store in the world have found it hard to sell units.
Ultimately, the HP TouchPad is a Hail Mary pass, with HP hoping that being different from the rest of the market might help it gain customers. But Hail Mary passes tend to fall harmlessly to the ground much more often than they succeed.
A Comparison of the HP TouchPad and the iPad 2
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