company and retail partners offered them for $100 apiece<\/a><\/span>. Granted, the company was operating at a loss with each sale, but there is now a base of WebOS users in the market, which could be used as a foundation to reintroduce a WebOS-powered smartphone.\n<\/p>\n\nThis time, HP really needs to focus on the quality of the product. The original Pre, launched by Palm, suffered because it was positioned as a flagship product built with cheap materials. HP didn’t improve too much upon that with its initial product offerings. The company also needed to be more aggressive in courting developers for the platform. Like Palm, it never really understood the importance of getting the developer community behind WebOS.\n<\/p>\n
\nSo far, HP has been mum on the notion of a smartphone. When asked about them, Todd Bradley, who runs the personal systems group, only focused on the ultrabook segment of thin laptops.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhitman, meanwhile, acknowledged that HP needs to be in the tablet business.\n<\/p>\n
\n“We’re going to make another run at this,” she said.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut Whitman and Bradley only talked about Windows 8, which isn’t expected to hit the market any time soon. The iPad, meanwhile, has established itself as the tablet to buy for consumers, with Android tablets making only minor headway with consumers.\n<\/p>\n
\nBradley scoffed at the idea that HP was behind on its tablet business.\n<\/p>\n
\n“We’re at the beginning stages of a new segment in personal computing,” Bradley said. “I hardly believe that a few months in we can be classified as too late.”\n<\/p>\n
\nBut with more Android tablet markets flooding the market and the iPad likely to cement its position further with another iteration early next year, Bradley may want to reassess that comment.\n<\/p>\n
\nIf HP wants to get into the tablet game faster, it may want to take a closer look at WebOS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
commentary If Hewlett-Packard is flip-flopping on the PC business, it should go all the way and bring WebOS and the mobile business back as well. After an evaluation of the business, HP said today that it would keep its personal systems group, aka its consumer PC business, calling it the best move for shareholders, consumers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":66931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1800birks4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}