It looks like hardware giant HP, will be coming out with their own line of tablets and smartphones that run on the Android Operating System. You may remember the “TouchPad” which came out running webOS, and was HP’s big failure in the tablet world. webOS was their own operating system, which they purchased from Palm a while back.
Well, they’ve smartened up, this time around, and have decided to work on a proven OS: The Android. It makes sense, when you think about, as HP has historically been a hardware developer, and not focused on too much else. So why try to put your own operating system on the market, when you can just allow Google to do all the heavy-lifting for you, and simply focus on the equipment?
Obviously HP sees the value in the tablet/smartphone market, and doesn’t really want to waste time jumping into the fray of the already competitive OS market, and try to go head to head with the likes of Android and iOS, and who can blame them? You know what they say; “If you can beat ’em, might as well join ’em”, and that’s exactly the move that HP is taking here… very smart, very strategic. Kudos HP, kudos.
If you recall, the company already tried its hand at smartphones as well, with the Veer 4G, again, running on webOS, and again, a complete bust. Maybe we’re starting to see a pattern here? No one really cares about webOS, and lucky for us,we probably will never have to see it again, as it’s unlikely that HP, or anyone else, will try and resurrect the fallen OS and bring it back into the fold.
We also have learned that this new tablet will run on the NVIDIA 4 Tegra, indicating that it will be targeting the higher-end market, as that processor is known to be extremely fast, and extremely effective, while being on the higher-end price-wise, but certainly worth it for what you’ll be getting.
Meg Whitman, the CEO of HP, even mentioned that HP planned on diving into the smartphone world, simply because that’s where all the developers are nowadays, opening huge opportunities for a hardware manufacturer to make some a serious profit.
So, HP might have been knocked around with their first attempts at a tablet and smartphone, but while they might be beaten up a little bit, they’re obviously not down for the count, and will be getting back into this game very shortly.
Do other tablet manufacturers have something to be worried about? We’ll see, but my best guess would be yes, they do since. HP has always proven itself a competent seller of hardware, it won’t be too surprising if, as a result of these impending changes, they become one of the major players in the game of smartphones and tablets. We’ll have to wait and see, but I personally can’t wait to see what they come up with.