The 7-inch HP webOS tablet that never was
Posted on 28. Dec, 2011 by Albert Madison in Tablets
Back in 2010 Hewlett-Packard paid a reported $1.2 billion in both cash and stock to acquire Palm Inc., Palm was the company responsible for the Palm OS and webOS platforms. At the time HP’s acquisition of Palm was greeted with a lot of excitement by Palm fans, the Palm company has been failing pre-acquisition and HP was seen as a company that could breathe some life into Palm.
A few short months after acquiring Palm HP unveiled it’s first webOS devices the 9.7-inch HP TouchPad tablet, HP Veer smartphone and HP Pre 3 smartphone. The new devices mirrored the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi webOS smartphones which Palm had released on their own before being acquired by HP. –It was confirmed later in 2011 that each of those devices had been designed by Palm before the HP acquisition and HP never played much of a role in the creation of each individual device other than footing the bill for manufacturing, distribution, marketing etc..
Promising future nixed
HP began shipping the HP TouchPad in July of 2011, some five months after unveiling the first webOS powered tablet computer. The Glossy Black HP TouchPad debuted with Wi-Fi only configurations and that were priced at $499 for a 16GB and $599 for a 32GB. At launch nobody could have foreseen what would happen only 49 days later.
In late August after disappointing sales HP announced they were officially discontinuing the HP TouchPad and webOS hardware. A few hours after that announcement rumors of a major liquidation sale hit the web to be confirmed a few hours later by HP who slashed prices of the HP TouchPad down to just $99 for a 16GB model and $149 for a 32GB model on their website. Shortly after HP dropped prices their retail partners followed, mass hysteria ensued as thousands of consumers looking for the $99 and $149 hit the malls and online stores to buy discontinued HP TouchPad’s.
The forgotten
With all the furor surrounding the death of the 9.7-inch TouchPad many forgot about the 7-inch HP TouchPad Go tablet that was seen passing through the FCC in early August. HP never formally announced the 7-inch HP TouchPad Go, but the fact that a 7-inch TouchPad was something the company was pursuing wasn’t a secret. The 7-inch HP webOS tablet had been tipped from the start, before the 9.7-inch TouchPad was ever unveiled.
Image: webOS Nation
The 7-inch TouchPad Go was never formally released but a few development models were in existence, one of those dev. models has made it’s way to webOS Nation (formally PreCentral) for an in-depth review.
In the full review the HP TouchPad Go is shown in full, and it’s judged to be a mini-HP TouchPad with a 1.5GHz processor, 5MP rear camera, and matte Black finish for the back of the device. It was also observed by webOS Nation that their TouchPad Go featured the unreleased webOS 3.0.5, HP said they would offer that new version of webOS to 9.7-inch TouchPad owners this month through an update. –webOS 3.0.5 mainly fixes bugs found in webOS 3.0.4.
Image: webOS Nation
HP has announced that webOS is going open source and they will continue to support the development of the platform, but the company won’t release any webOS tablets until 2013. HP recently hired a new CEO, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, to replace Leo Apotheker who agreed to putting an end to webOS for HP in August. As CEO Meg Whitman has already said that her company is interested in releasing Windows 8 tablet PCs.
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