Almost a year after buying Palm and nearly two years since Palm introduced its last product, H.P. announced on Wednesday in San Francisco that it would make a tablet computer, the Touchpad, running on the webOS operating system.
It looks like an iPad. But it is lighter, weighing 1 1/2 pounds, and has a 9.7-inch screen. Running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, its selling point will be its ability to multitask quickly.
It will support virtual private networks for corporate users and enables video conferencing.
The device will be available later this summer, the company said, with Wi-Fi. Devices for 3G and 4G phone networks will come later.
The company also introduced the Veer, a small phone the dimensions of a credit card with a slide-out keyboard. It also operates as a hotspot device. It will be available in the spring.
And the company introduced the Pre 3, an iPhone lookalike for the business market. It also has a slide-out keyboard, and will be available in the summer.
H.P. has created an updated operating system for mobile devices, webOS 2.1.
The software is currently available on five devices, including the Pre 2 for Verizon, which is going on sale on Thursday. That s the same day Verizon will begin selling the long-awaited Apple iPhone, so the Pre is not going to get a lot of attention.
No exact dates of release for most of the products. And no prices were mentioned.
Jon Rubinstein, H.P. s senior vice president and the former chief executive of Palm, spent a lot of time at the two-hour product introduction talking about the software. As the devices become similar a big screen in a small frame the companies have to differentiate on the software and how well it is integrated.
It also has to get developers to build apps and games for it. With a tiny installed base of Pre phones, H.P. devices aren t very appealing. But the company said it would also place webOS on PCs, which because H.P. sells 120 PCs a minute, suddenly the installed base of webOS devices is immense.
In a demonstration, H.P. showed how the OS is a gaming platform, integrates social media alerts and messaging throughout the platform s apps.
It will have a Kindle app, but the company only showed magazines from Time Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment