HP to announce webOS roadmap
January 4th, 2011, 5:19pm by KelvinThe last time Palm went nearly a year without any real signs of life was when they were working on Nova and kept the lights on with color refreshes of the Centro. As we know, they held a press conference and hit one out of the park in January 2009 when they surpassed everyone’s expectations by not only showing a working OS, but also unveiling a breakthrough handset design AND announcing a carrier partner. It was clear that Palm had not been sitting on their hands the whole time.
Today, Palm (now HP) finds itself in the same position again: irrelevant for all intents and purposes, hopelessly behind the pack, pretty much staring at the deepest chasm of despair. Can they pull another rabbit out of the hat? Will they blow away expectations again? Can they justify their paychecks for the last 10 months in which they don’t seem to have done a single dang thing?
What are the expectations this time around? State-of-the-art phone and tablet are assumed, so the real question is timing. One of the more specific rumors came from webOSroundup.com, who had reported an HP-only press event between CES and Mobile World Congress (check), but indicated that it would be in NY or Vegas (making them 1 for 2 so far). The rest of the leak:
1) A Sprint-exclusive webOS 4G device launched June 2011
2) No webOS 2.0 on older-gen devices until March 2011
3) Verizon launch on Pre2 in January
4) Nothing leaked about tablets.
Seems suicidal to hang one’s hat on a single Sprint device that won’t materialize for another 4 months. Let’s hope Palm can bring more to the table.
January 4th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
No way do they announce in February a product that won’t ship until June. There might be a product in June, but we won’t discover that in February. Me, I’m betting on a tablet introduction, 2 new phones, and an additional device from one of the following categories: (1) Photo frame; (2) Printer; (3) Calculator. We know there’s a continuing market for at least one of those items!
January 4th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
I’m thinking the “Think Big” refers to a family of tablets, “Think Small” refers to a family of smartphones, and ‘Think Beyond” refers to selling their vision of webOS (roadmap of the platform, not products). I think within each family, they can showcase some products that will be available immediately and some that are farther off, as long as they are differentiated. That way, they can pull of a “show of force,” even if, at the end of the month, all we are really getting is a 2nd rate iPad-knock off and a refreshed Pixi.
As for the vision of webOS, I’d like them to show that the devices can co-exist in a world where lots of people have devices that run on other platforms. Certainly, the browser and device-agnostic services (like streaming video/audio, Facebook, exchange active sync, etc), should be touted as equalizers. Make webOS play nicely with services we already use a focus of the vision. If they come out and suggest that we should all replace our devices and services with an HP equivalent, it’s going to be a tough sell. Oh, and give us an Android emulator, so we can use an Eye-Fi to interface with our SLRs too!
January 15th, 2011 at 2:17 am
Well, HP better bring their “A” game. To the surprise of no one, having your flagship smart phone effectively unavailable has taken its toll on webOS usage stats, with the numbers clearly showing (see: http://www.pyslent.com/?p=1867 ) that use is dropping, meaning Pres & Pixis are being retired faster than they’re being sold. Since about August 2009, Android use has gone from 5x webOS usage to about 40x webOS usage Heck, even in August Android was “only” 10x webOS use. None of this is a surprise, but it does support that Palm needed some new phones in the fall if they wanted to get any sales. There must have been a few devices killed or held back, I doubt even Palm thought they could go 1 year without even an update to their only 2 devices.
January 15th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Are there more iPhones than Android phones? There seem to be conflicting reports out there. To no one’s surprise, all the advertising metrics favor Android. Who’ve thought, Google managed to build a dominant advertising platform.
January 15th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
The Android chart is just scary.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AsZ890mI5DLHdHBJT3hNb250c001Uk9JMEtQS1hkdHc&hl=en&single=true&gid=3&output=html
January 16th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I wonder if webOS will run on my HP Mini 110?
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/16/hp-promises-webos-netbooks-to-go-along-with-smartphones-and-slat/
January 16th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
What would be the benefit (or synergy) from having devices all running the same OS? Maybe you’d only have to purchase the same app once?
January 16th, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Bookmark syncing, common interface. Probably the same strategy as Google is pursuing with Chrome/ Android. Well, once Google actually lets Android apps run on Chrome.
January 19th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
More feel-bad study results to show what Palm is up against. This time, it’s a “loyalty” study, indicating that dissatisfied current Palm users are very likely to churn to another platform.
Meanwhile, rumors point to a focus on webOS tablets and a cloud story surrounding webOS devices. Interesting stuff, and certainly Apple’s iPad sales confirm that it’s a fight worth fighting. But boy, I’m gonna need a new phone soon.
January 20th, 2011 at 12:09 am
Maybe Dell will blow us away the day before with some WP7 powerhouses!
BTW, has Dell ever had an “event” before? I think it was clever to do it in San Francisco the day before, since otherwise I bet a lot of journalists attending would otherwise skip it.
January 24th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Had an idea for Touchstone integration to handle the bigger form of a tablet. What do you think of this: instead of a single spot, there are actually two magnets & inductive charging spots on the back of the device. Then you could either use a new tablet-optimized Touchstone, or two that are Pre-sized.
January 24th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Then it would be up to the user to correctly space the current touchstones? Or maybe the opposite magnets on the tablet will be so strong, the gen 1 touchstones would self align? Good for charging, but not so good for mounting.
January 31st, 2011 at 2:27 pm
NPD reports that webOS had 2% of the US smartphone consumer sales market in Q4 2010. That’s not zero at least! Canalys today pegged Android’s US sales at 12.1 million. Combining the 2 studies (NPD has Android’s US share at 53%), we see that US consumers purchased 456K webOS phones (and the same for WP7 phones, yikes). If Jake is right that the webOS install base is actually decreasing, that means we are talking about at least 17% in defections over the quarter (rounding current user base off to 3 million– that’s our consensus estimate, right?).
February 2nd, 2011 at 9:11 am
Not webOS related, but looks like HP is finally bringing wireless telestrator technology to the classroom. Hopefully they get Tsar of the Telestrator Marv Albert for his endorsement.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/02/hp-unveils-digital-sketch-and-pocket-whiteboard-gets-serious-ab/
February 7th, 2011 at 12:00 am
OK, my predictions:
1) New smartphone, available by the end of the month.
2) New 10″ tablet, available by the end of the month. Cheaper than the Xoom.
3) Pre Plus release date.
4) HP webOS 2 released to Pres & Pixis.
5) The “floodgates” of webOS 2 apps released, over 2000 including HP & independent apps.
6) Another smartphone.
7) Cloud schmoud.
8) webOS printing apps, Kindle apps & other popular apps.
February 7th, 2011 at 3:17 am
I need a new smartphone something fierce. Apps from WP7 that I’d like to see among your 2000 new apps:
1) eWallet
2) netflix
3) Kindle
4) uStream
5) Slingplayer
6) Shazam
7) an official Facebook App (OK, not on WP7 either)
February 7th, 2011 at 10:27 am
Dang, should’ve predicted that HP would be shipping a new All-in-One Touchsmart, http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/07/hps-touchsmart-610-and-9300-all-in-ones-tilt-and-twirl-on-out/
February 8th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
So the tea leaves are telling me that HP will launch a Sprint phone, but it won’t be WIMAX. Ruby did diss wimax a few months ago. Combined with yesterday’s Echo announcement and a pending WP7 3G phone launch, Sprint’s 3G smartphone price hike makes a little more sense (business-wise). To me, this portends an inevitable switch to LTE. If Sprint is still releasing more high profile 3G devices than 4G devices at this stage of the game (3 to 1, the only recent 4G offering being the HTC Shift 4G), they are on the road to nowhere.