Jon Rubinstein announces the HP TouchPad in February 2007
HP paid $1.2 billion to purchase Palm to get its WebOS operating system designed for handheld devices. HP then launched the TouchPad tablet running WebOS. But after less than seven weeks on the market, HP killed the TouchPad, and open-sourced WebOS.
The New York Times offers some explanations for this expensive failure.
WebOS turned out to be something of a toxic asset. Several former Palm and H.P. employees involved in WebOS say that there was little hope for the software from the beginning, because the way it was built was so deeply flawed.
“Palm was ahead of its time in trying to build a phone software platform using Web technology, and we just weren’t able to execute such an ambitious and breakthrough design,” said Paul Mercer, former senior director of software at Palm, who oversaw the interface design of WebOS and recruited crucial members of the team. “Perhaps it never could have been executed because the technology wasn’t there yet.”
Who knows whether the report is accurate or actually includes all the major factors involved. But it is certainly a cautionary tale for others attempting to launch a high end attack on Apple’s iPad or even Android.
The fact is that Apple created its mobile operating system, iOS, with a very sound foundation, somewhat based on OS X, and it has been refining and polishing iOS for five years now, since its original announcement by Steve Jobs in January 2007. At the time, Steve Jobs said “iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” He was right.
Take a look at this part of the 2007 iPhone launch event and think about the mobile phones we all used back then and what we are using today. This announcement is probably Steve Jobs’ best-ever product launch. Here is the opening segment.
