Comment by hnlmorg

You say that but HP already have an established and mature supply chain for hardware which, isn’t common. And particularly with portable drives like laptops and PDAs. HP were in better position to capitalise than you claim with your “anyone” comment.

Their “$500 tablet” could be easily dropped to $100 because it wasn’t a particularly high end device to begin with. I mean, it did have some niceties. But there was also a hell of a lot of corners cut too.

Ironically, this was the same problem Palm faced with its WebOS phones before they sold to HP. Their phones were nice but they felt far too sluggish and basic considering their price point. I actually wanted a WebOS phone but ended up with Android (likely HTC) because you got so much more for your money.

Given HP (and Palm) has experience building portable devices like PDAs, there really isn’t any excuse for their failing in price and hardware for the WebOS tablets and phones. They already had experience in this market so should have really known better.