So What Does LG know that the rest of us don’t?

Remember Palm and their operating system WebOS?

It was bought by HP in 2011 for $1.2bn. At the time HP gave it 100% backing, but much like the football Chairman who gets the backs his manager during a bad losing streak, they have decide to change. HP did launch products such as their TouchPad which ran on WebOS, but the result was poor sales.

Palm developed WebOS to run smartphones, Tablets and mobile devices but was swept aside by Apple IOS, Google’s Android and even fell far short of players such as Blackberry.

HP will retain the underlying WebOS patents and technology but will handover the source code, documentation, would be used to power its next-generation smart TV technology. The big question now is whether WebOS will fair any better against the same competitors in the emerging smart TV battleground? Will an Android dominance lead to manufactures want to create their own look and feel, or like Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 will they merely jump ship to the perceived next best thing?

To demonstrate what HP actual thinks they have just launched their first Android-powered HP Slate 7 tablet, at the 2013 Mobile World Congress.

HP is not thought to have recouped the money it paid for Palm for WebOS..

A Tablet A Day?

It may be starting to rain tablets as manufactures line up to take on Apple and its iPad. The game may be more about getting to market quickly than getting all the bells and whistles into the devices. The Android platform has clearly shown that Apple is not without strong competitors and its adoption onto the tablet market may be interesting to watch. So who is bring what to the tablet wars?

Google / Verizon
The week that Google pulled out of direct retailing its Nesus One and admitted that others can do it better is one aspect to consider. The other is that Google let HTC design its Nexus One and anyone with a HTC Android will tell you it’s a HTC phone.
However Google has some great things to build into the tablet; email, search, maps, office and an apps store and well as a cloud approach and that is without YouTube, Google Editions etc.

Acer
Acer is rumoured to be almost ready to launch and they have the channel distribution and technology competency to make a good splash. There are questions as to whether they will use Google’s Android or Chrome platforms but you can see a trend developing in the Google versus Apple wars.

RIM Blackberry
We like the name BlackPad or BlackSlate and it certainly would be interesting to see RIM move up to compete outside their comfort zone. They did make the transition from email to smartphone and from keypad to touch but this will seriously take them into the PC world and it will be very interesting to watch whether their corporate base continues to remain loyal or as some have already started ditches them for generic safety. It is rumoured that the tablet will not be 3G network connected and will be a 8.9” screen and will not be on the market till the end of the year.

Dell
Dell appear to have interestingly chosen to take on the iPad in Europe first with their 5 inch Mini 5 tablet running on Android. The real question is whether a 5” screen is big enough to differentiate it from a phone and to compete with the larger screens. Dell again has marketing clout and and a very strong distribution and sales operation.It will be interesting if they also can apply some of their good design concepts to the Mini 5.

HP
HP announce their intentions early and also announced their changes early too! It is unclear what operating system they intend to use but they surely can’t afford to be late to the party and will certainly throw money at their sales and marketing operation.

MSI
Micro-Star International is launching a tablet powered by the powerful Nvidia Tegra chip. It appears they are caught between operating systems and have both an 8.9” and 10” models and the user can then chose between Android and Windows 7. We would suggest that if they can’t make up their minds its not always wise to leave it to the consumer. It also demonstrates that Microsoft is loosing the plot.

BT
Apparently it is reported in The Telegraph that BT has announced it will be releasing a touchscreen tablet PC that can apparently make and receive phone calls via built in speaker/ microphone or bluetooth. What operating system it will be based on is unclear but the logical move to integrate telephony makes sense and will wake others up to what their offers should be. It doesn’t make any sense to have to pay twice for the internet service as in the Apple model and either loose tethering could have strong financial appeal. However BT is not strong in this market and although it does have distribution and channels its brand is somewhat unaligned.

The tablet, which will be launched later this year, will be offered as part of a BT package and targeted at the family and home users market. This narrow perspective could make it an also ran before it even gets to market.

Trends

Industry analysts Gartner and IDC are now making a distinction between tablet PCs and tablet Pad devices The tablet PC use an x86-based processor and a full operating system, such as Windows, whilst the tablet Pad devices use ARM-based cell-phone and smart-phone chips and mobile operating systems such as Android, Web OS or the iPhone’s OS. This is a significant step change in the market and starts to confirm that Microsoft is on the decline and seriously threatened as computing starts to converge on the mobile.

IDC project that 6 million tablet devices will ship this year and that 4 million will be iPads. Interestingly they also see HP as the main threat to Apple. Our money would be on sitting tight and waiting till its time to do the Christmas shopping when things may be a bit clearer!

Apple Versus Adobe/HP

An interesting presentation from Adobe /HP on their forthcoming tablet with full Adobe Flash and Air support

Tablets Slate 'Lookie Likie' eBook Readers

It’s a new year and as always the Comsumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is bombarding us with new ereaders, tablets, mobiles, TVs etc.Today we see the start of the beginning or the start of the end of some ebook devices. This year will certainly be the war between the dedicated ebook device we have long stated as a transitional device and the emergence of the tablet, online reading and the cloud.

Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft announced an that Apple isn’t going to have the slate to themselves and that Microsoft are not only serious about tablet they want to be there first. They showed a yet to be released HP’s 10” touchscreen tablet running Windows 7. The claims made would appeal to all, with it being ‘almost as powerful as a PC’, ideal for web, reading and entertainment. Bing will be the default search engine while MSN will be set as the default home page.



Ballmer showed 3 modes – movie, book (running Amazon’s Kindle software) and PC. Ballmer however did not reveal any details about the specifications, pricing or launch date, but said two other 'slate PCs' from Pegatron and Archos would run Microsoft software.

The HP tablet is a basically a color e-reader runningAmazon Kindle software, with few other details besides a sub-$500 price point and an estimated arrival on the market by mid-2010. Microsoft's CEO also briefly showed off two other similar products, one from Archos (which was running a movie, hence focused on multimedia) and a larger-screen slate from Pegatron, for reading newspapers and magazines.

Another tablet is this sneak preview of the Dell Streak - a 5” touchscreen, Android based tablet offering. The question is whether it is a tablet and iTouch with its 800 x 480 resolution screen, Bluetooth, 3G, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, a microSD card slot and Wi-Fi?.



This next video shows new Android based eBook reader, the enTourage eDGe at CES. The device combines a full-sized ebook reader screen with a second colour screen designed for the internet, to play movies, and much more. We apologise for the ad material on the video but think the content is worth a view.



So would you buy a Kindle DX, an eInk 'lookie likie', a tablet, a mobile or wait for Apple to fire its salvo later this month? Whatever its clear that eInk is looking drabber and the devices more limited by the day.

HP Have eSkin?

HP has announced a new display technology called “eSkin”.

“HP eSkins is in fact a dynamic digital surface (and not just a static display) that can be controlled to address up to 80 segments to give the perception of movement and eye-catching motion. The segmented display can be turned off and on to create visual effects.”

Well that’s as clear as mud and sounds somewhere between eInk and LCD. Is it just a bespoke designer logo or device labelling product to personalise your device or does it hold other display features? No doubt it all will become clearer soon, or maybe not...but we like the name.

Welcome to the Screen Racers

HP has just set up a company, in collaboration with 3M spin-off, called Phicot to make plastic eink screens which if successful could cost a tenth of the cost of today’s glass displays. The plastic sheet is just 40 microns thick, cheaper than glass and uses less space. In comparison the glass for an LCD is 0.7mm. thick , heavier and requires complex clean room manufacturing.

There's a long way to go before Phicot can create big screens with every pixel perfect; cracks, pinholes, bubbles and particles can all cause defects that reduce the yield. Today the displays use grayscale E-Ink with the promise colour screens ever coming.

So will large OLED beat the with cost effect panels? Again the answer is maybe and in the future but the difference is more down to a slowdown in the global economy than technology.

As we have written before OLED offers much; flexible displays, transparent displays that allow a window by day to function as a light by night, and plastic OLED lights that can be cut and molded into interesting shapes. However OLED is coming with Samsung planning a 14.1" OLED laptop and TV this year and costly manufacturing conversion is an issue.

So plasma and greayscale eink look to be the screen technologies for the time being at least.

HP Comes Silverlight Ready

The announcement that HP will ship its PCs next year with Microsoft’s Live Search reconfigured is significant for Microsoft as it starts to try and rebuild its search share. Will it make a difference is questionable as many will merely unset it as their default and leave it dormant. However will they do the same with Microsoft’s Silverlight? Silverlight is their answer to Flash and this move may well increase its chances of competing in that growing marketplace.

We envisage that competitors will once again raise the unfair practice questions and it will be interesting to see how Silverlight develops.

Even the Mighty Wal-Mart Can Get it Wrong

Wal-Mart has withdrawn its online video download service which it pioneered with Hewlett Packard only a year ago. Wal-Mart was the first major retailer to partner with all of the major Hollywood movie studios and TV networks to offer downloads the same day titles were released on DVD. The service was launched in February and was hailed by media industry experts as a "game changer" that could introduce millions of DVD buyers to the practice of downloading.
Videos purchased on Walmart.com can be played using the Microsoft Windows Media Player or the Wal-Mart Video Download Manager, but cannot be transferred to a computer other than the one used to download them. Wal-Mart will continue offering physical DVDs for sale at its stores and online

HP spokesman Hector Marinez said the company decided to discontinue its video download-only merchant store services because the market for paid video downloads did not perform "as expected."

The Internet video business remains uncertain and is changing rapidly and this move shows that even the big players can get their digital moves wrong. Who would expect Wal-Mart, HP and the major studios to get it wrong? However, we must also look to the digital success stories and ask if we expected them to get it right? What is clear is that there are many experimental services right across the digital arena and predicting success is often down to making money or as Amazon proved sustainable cash flow.

Today we look back at some of the services that didn’t make it, wrong technology, wrong business model or just wrong time.