HP’s TouchPad may be out in June; reaching 100 million webOS devices soon

16th March, 2011 by adina
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In his major strategy briefing, Leo Apotheker, HP chief, has recently announced an aggressive webOS plan. He anticipated that the TouchPad and smartphones such as the Pre3 and Veer could all start shipping before June and could be part of wave after wave of launches. HP ultimately hoped to ship around 100 million webOS devices, even if the HP chief didn’t mention anything about when this would happen.

Apotheker said that webOS plans on PCs may see a beta version available by late 2011. Moreover, the full rollout will be out sometime next year.

This goal seems pretty ambitious for the company, which took over Palm at a time when its share was getting smaller and has since immersed to almost four percent in the USA. On the other hand, HP has committed itself to the platform and even plans to get it into devices where a mobile operating system is still rare (for example, printers). Palm is generally believed to have suffered from a lack of funds and scale that forced the company to follow only limited deals and limited the reach of Palm’s marketing.

Apple has just reached about 100 million iPhones shipped in March. However, the company has reached this figure for all iOS hardware in 2010.

The Pre3, Veer and TouchPad will be practically the only main mobile devices beyond RIM and Apple to have both the hardware and operating system under its control; this technique is allowing exclusive tricks (for example, special applications which run when a device is on its Tocuhstone dock or the option of pushing a certain website from a webOS handset to the TouchPad to read it on the larger display, only by moving the two devices close together).


     

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