Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The tablet shakeout

This news item was not surprising to hear. What was surprising was that it took so long to happen:

The sudden demise of Hewlett-Packard Co's WebOS TouchPad after just seven weeks on shelves was a reminder of how tech giants have failed so far to take a bite out of Apple Inc's iPad.

The TouchPad joins Dell Streak 5 in the tablet graveyard and weak sales for many offerings suggest others are bound to follow.

"The non-iPad tablets just won't sell at retail. That's the clear message from events over the past few days," said Mark Gerber, an analyst at Boston research and investment firm Detwiler Fenton.

Other tablets that have failed to click with consumers include Asustek Computer Eee Pad Transformer and the Xoom from Motorola Mobility, which Google Inc plans to buy.

It was ridiculous from the start to imagine that the flock of imitators could challenge Apple on quality at the same price. Any reasonable person could have seen that imitators need to challenge on price and price alone. At $99, HP’s tablet is now selling like crazy.

My experience with the imitators have been underwhelming. Fortunately, I decided to go for a knockoff like the Coby Kyros instead of the wannabes like HP and Del..

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