H-P Releases Its $800 Slate, the lastest Ipad Rival
The article I am blogging on this week is the news that on Friday H-P released a touchscreen tablet computer that runs Windows called the Slate 500. This tablet is supposed to rival the Ipad and is "the ideal PC for professionals who don't usually work at a traditional desk, yet need to stay productive in a secure, familiar Windows environment."
There are three issues that I see that make me ask: H-P what the heck are you doing?
1) It's six months after the Ipad has been released and nine months after H-P revealed the prototype of it. The Ipad has already built up a customer base and has numerous apps that are already available. H-P will be playing catch up, if it even gets a following.
2) This price of the Slate 500 is listed at $800 which is more expensive than the Ipad, excluding the ones that have the most cutting edge storage space and wireless connectivity. I don't think most people will pay a higher price for a new, unproved tablet that is not any better than the Ipad technology-wise.
3) Lastly, the screen on the Slate 500 is 8.9", compared with 9.7" for the Ipad. Again, priced at $800 I"m not really sure what more you get with the Slate 500 over the Ipad.
H-P I understand that you probably have a lot of money in R-D tied up in developing this tablet which may account for the high cost. If this is supposed to be the main competitor to the Ipad than I am going to say that Apple is going to remain dominant in the tablet market for awhile and their competitors have a long way to go.
Wow..Thats another IPad rival. I am sure apple needs to do a lot more than it already is doing. As lot of other companies are coming out with latest technologies to compete with the IPad. Even I came accross this $35 Laptop invented by a collaboration effort of IIT Engineers in India. I blogged about it this week.Check it out!
ReplyDeleteIts amazing how technology is changing and coming out with different things to meet the needs of different market segments.
The only benefit of the HP tablet computer would be that it uses Windows, which users may be more familiar with. I do agree that with the amount of apps available through the iPad, that many users could prefer it no matter what operating system it used. As you have already stated, I also do not see any significance in HP revealing their tablet computer so late in the game.
ReplyDeleteAt what point do you cut your losses and accept defeat? If you've been beat to the market by a considerable amount of time and your competitor has built a large market share, what point is there in bringing a copy-cat with no real improvement to the market?
ReplyDeleteI would like to clarify a few points regarding HP Slate. First of all, Slate is not even remotely close to Ipad. Slate is a PC, Ipad is an appliance. You can run all the PC applications on Slate without any modifications. Ipad is neither a PC nor an alternative to PC, it is used in addition to PC. Ipad cannot run any PC applications because of it's limited processing power. Slate is targeted towards only Business market, where as Ipad is targeted to various markets from 2-year olds to senior citizens. At the end of the day, the two products are in entirely different device categories and can even be thought of as opposites, so I feel there is no real comparision between the two.
ReplyDelete