Have death throes ever been more prolonged than this?
Following a big build up earlier this year the HP Slate was seemingly dropped as the company’s $1.2-bn outlay for Palm saw it continually reiterate its love for all things webOS. So imagine our surprise when it turns out the Windows 7-based Slate is still alive… just.
This week the tablet accidentally turned up on HP’s site (web cache) leading to an HP spokesperson telling Engadget the product is ”in customer evaluations now and will make a determination soon on the next steps.” Now we learn those evaluations have led to a business-only focus.
The Slate will be “more customer-specific than broadly deployed,” confirmed HP personal systems group VP Todd Bradley yesterday, again to Engadget, but now it will be deployed “for the enterprise” in Q3.
Now the most interesting aspect of this story isn’t whether the Slate was or wasn’t being canned, but how – in little more than six months since it was first unveiled – the world’s largest PC maker has decided to marginalize tablets using Windows 7.
Love or hate the iPad, what Apple has changed is convincing rivals that the key to making this tricky form factor work is making it an expansion of the smartphone, not a downsizing of the laptop. With smartbooks also choosing the same route, this leaves Microsoft in an increasingly tricky situation and suggests Windows Phone 7 will be the most important platform in its history.
As for HP, it may not have killed the Slate outright, but with a ‘PALMPAD’ patent filed this month for its previously codenamed “Hurricane” webOS tablet, it has clearly lost faith in Microsoft’s mobile strategy. With the likes of Samsung creating Bada, Motorola’s purchase of Azingo, and the continued rise of Android and Meego, HP definitely isn’t the only one.
Gordon
