I’m sure you will read much in today’s newspapers about the new trio of devices launched by HP last night – two phones (Veer and Pre3) and a tablet (HPTouchpad). The specs look pretty attractive. Problem is that everyone expects the iPad2 to have them all too come the spring. Anyway, the HP devices are not available to mere mortals until at least midyear.
But what is really interesting is how the battle for smartphone/tablet OS is developing. HP up until now, was pretty much a Microsoft company. You may remember that Ballmer touted an HP Tablet running Windows a year back. Now, not only is HP running with webOS (the OS it inherited when it bought Palm last year) but is now saying that it’s going to bring that OS to its PCs (and printers..) this year. Remember HP is the world’s biggest PC maker and was pretty much Windows only up until now.
So Microsoft is now really facing a massive challenge. As we reported earlier today – The game has changed - smartphones (where Microsoft is not amongst the leaders) are now outselling PCs. Tablets are the hottest hardware category (where Microsoft isn’t a player) Makes you wonder if anyone will be using MS Windows in any new devices in a few years time.
Which goes full circle to the Nokia story – Nokia torn between burning alive and drowning. Makes a Nokia/Microsoft partnership look pretty essential now for BOTH parties. We await Friday’s announcement with growing anticipation.