While it's not uncommon for a device to take months to hit the market after the announcement, will the TouchPad be rendered obsolete by the time it hits store shelves, especially with the iPad 2 and waves of Google Android Honeycomb tablets waiting in the wings?
One major advantage the Palo Alto company has over its competitors is that it has the largest PC market share. It may be late to the slate market compared with iOS and Android machines, but tools such as the webOS PDK let developers port applications written for other platforms.
Why HP bought and developed webOS instead of licensing Android
While HP could have opted to use Android instead of investing in its own platform, there are strong reasons why this is money well spent. "Differentiation from other competitive products will be crucial for HP," according to Daryl Chiam, Canalys principal analyst. "With full control over its operating system, HP can truly differentiate in connected devices, as it has shown through Synergy, and more recently with Touch to Share."
Besides being able to create a strong ecosystem, HP can also generate revenue from app sales. Both Apple and Google take a 30 percent cut from developers for every app sold, a model which the Palo Alto company may adopt. The trick, however, is in wooing the developer community. While it may try to undercut the competition by taking less than 30 percent of the sales revenue, Lillian Tay, principal analyst for Gartner, believes that "HP must listen carefully to what the developers need and balance with what consumers would want to pay. HP can also leverage best practices learnt from the days of the Palm OS managing the developer community and make it relevant for today."
What HP needs to do to challenge the incumbents
While the company has established partnerships and channels for PC and services retail, Lillian says "the company needs to grow relationships with telecommunications service providers", as well as leverage its experiences in the enterprise business and take the lead to offer enterprise-grade security.
In fact, security is one area which the company sees a need to address. "Part of the challenges of having digital content and information is the challenge of privacy," said Phil McKinney, vice president and CTO for HP PSG. "We're going to see the emergence of digital fortresses. The digital fortress is really a trusted third party where you can have your information held, managed, distributed, coordinated with somebody whose jobs is to protect that information, especially given the number of devices we have in our pockets."
Moreover, reaching a tipping point is also important when it comes to convincing developers to devote time and resources to code for the platform. Daryl suggests that "bundling a webOS smart phone and TouchPad for retail should also be seriously considered by HP--as getting more webOS devices in the hands, homes and offices of users will help build the ecosystem".
What are HP's chances?
It may be late in the game, but that doesn't mean the tablet market is doomed to a duopoly. One of the difficulties in coding for Android is that there is a wide range of devices with different specifications. As such, even games ported from iOS such as Splinter Cell: Conviction looks graphically worse on Android machines.
HP, however, has control of all elements of hardware and OS. Once it manages to hit a critical mass in the market, there is a high chance of strong developer support. And in the tablet wars, that is one critical success factor.
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