Gadgetory

what's up everybody I'm known from technobuffalo too sad day I don't even know you know the the announcement today HP's conference call couple hours before the conference call their their earnings call have a routine thing in the business world earnings call till I tell people how you did last quarter and a couple hours before it story started to break there's a press release and stuff that I HP was killing off the webos hardware business and so they had the conference call and all that stuff when you're talking about all day and John said to me hey man why don't you do a video why don't you do a I think John used the word rant he likes the word rant to a rant video it's like in expressing my feelings video it's like a eulogy because I'm not that long ago I wrote a letter on the website an open letter to HP begging them pleading with them to do the right thing do something with webos get those get they get the flagship phones out make them work right you know was back in 90 is it februari i guess a while ago back in verse don't let you think about the good old days wasn't that long ago look at look at how sad this is there's not even so you had a phone in here i was going to do a whole gimmick where I took my palm phone you know I webos phone and I was trying to call HP it was going to be like hi HP can I talk to the webos division please no there's nobody there why cuz you killed it but I couldn't even do that because I can't even find the phone yeah this box depressing so it wasn't that long ago John and I headed out to Fort Mason pavilion in San Francisco for the big HP webos event and they showed the touchpad and they showed the pre three and the veer and you know it was exciting they promised to get products out faster and the touchpad looked phenomenal and you know they did the thing where they took the pre three and they clinked it against the touchpad screen and transfer the webpage all that stuff and everybody was excited and now it's what it's not even a year later 49 days since the touch pad was launched and it's dead that a day short of the record i think it was Michael Gartenberg was treating a day short of the record helped bike in the shortest lifespan of a mobile product in the modern era but I don't know man I'm you know I'm more sad I guess Mike Pearlman was right with his headline webos croaks Noah Kravitz cries I'm sad about this because I really could that you know that they're there are a couple reasons why first of all I guess this war turns into a rant first of all webos is great the the palm or the HP products rather buggy you know touchpad buggy pre three never even came out I guess it launched very quietly in Europe maybe I mean they said on the call they're going to be it'll be shutting down q4 of this year i think the hardware division so like what does that mean they're going to ship more they're going to ship the pre three in America who's going to buy it the pre three never came out and all that but still webos just a great operating system and an on touchpad it looked you know like it just there look like potential even though it's buggy when it came out even though I personally am not all that high on tablets there's potential to do it a little bit differently you know and in a very elegant stylish way and I've always thought the webos was sort of my favorite parts of iOS my favorite parts of Android kind of matched together but with its own unique you know unique visual thing happening the notification system is excellent but the the operating system is clean and that just the design of it is a little more I don't know it speaks me a little more than an android does but does more kind of under the hood stuff than iOS does or you know more advanced with the notifications and multitasking everything anyway it so it's sad to me because you know just so great and now they're shutting down the hardware business the software business isn't dead don't know exactly is going to happen with them and I'll talk about that in a second second thing is just that you know this was what everybody was afraid of when it was announced that HP was buying webOS and this could go one of two ways this could go the good way where you know palm didn't really have the money then have the resources on their own when they made their first come back to really do enough you know that the hardware manufacturing and quality control and distribution channels and they didn't have the muscle to probably negotiate better deals and I still think that you know that original deal to go with sprint as the no disrespect to sprint but but that was just it was bad bang from the start to have sprint be the exclusive distributor of the pre their their reach just isn't big enough and so you thought wow now they're getting the chance with webos and the palm people and everything they're getting a chance with a company that's big that knows how to make hardware that knows how to distribute that knows how to do a lot stuff and then this could be great they can finally have the muscle they need or this could go the other way which is HP and palm seriously how's that going to work palms all like the pre and design and this future looking software and stuff and big disruptive and that's not what HP is about and this could just turn out badly and it's turned out badly you know is a 1.2 billion dollar mistake in essence the other news you know come out of this this this call these announcements today is that HP is either going to spin off or probably probably spin off but possibly sell their consumer PC business they're all about the enterprise now so I don't know you know maybe that's why I that's why beats decided to go with HTC maybe they knew this was coming because the whole thing with beats audio and HP computers and all that who knows but anyway so just kind of sad from that standpoint that another case of a giant company swallowing a smaller more kind of fast moving or innovative or disruptive tech company and it's just not working out which is too bad so that's a bummer bummed out you know and then there's the mobile the mobile scene and you know let's face it every tablet maker not named Apple has I don't want to say you can't say failed you can say everyone's failed but they have not performed as well as they would have hoped to this point in time there's no but a Paloma nating the tablet market I'm not saying the best or the worst or and I'm not having judgment I'm just saying you look at sheer volume and ipad ipad 2 just killing it compared to everybody else you know and touchpad this this report came out earlier this week just yesterday i guess the best buy had they wanted to send a bunch of touch pads back because they'd ordered like two hundred and seventy five thousand of them or something 270,000 and sold not even 25,000 not even ten percent and just kind of shows you the tablet market metallurgist rim way out in front and in the smartphone market you know with everything that's happened this year to nokia and rim and Windows Phone 7 I think being really interesting and innovative but not you know not it didn't fly out of the gate we'll see what happens this fall with Nokia on board of the partner and and the mango update finally coming but really at this point you know it's a two-way race blackberry still is a huge market share obviously nokia huge you know in the lower end market but in the high-end smartphone market it's a two horse race right now between apple and android and blackberry you know hopefully getting their thing back together we'll see and i just hate to see a player with a lot of potential with a good product or at least good software i hate to see that player drop out of the race now hopefully webos will wind up being licensed or i think more likely bought by somebody else but it might even it might be too late you know no matter what so it's sad for me from that standpoint from somebody who's an enthusiast a fan of mobile technology and also professionally been covering this stuff for so long because competition you know breeds innovation and ideally just brings better and better stuff to consumers into the world at law large and you know losing losing losing a player losing a good player or player with talent and potential is a sad thing all that being said what's next i'm sorry from kind of low energy here just won't talk about this tomorrow what kind of bummed out by i drink an espresso right before this to fire myself up but just it's it's sad man i'm sad Mike was right you know the tears I can feel them you can't see him I can feel in the inside so um so what does this mean let's get let's pick this thing back up I'm gonna I'm gonna carry this around I want to use this for something I fit my iphone in it carry my iphone in this palm case just uh I don't know just cuz now I won't even fit it's too big the way you carry something I use this in my wallet or something for a little while so what does this mean what happens now webos I would love to see HTC by webos I don't think it's going to happen but it's an interesting time earlier this week Google buying motorola assuming that deal gets approved that's going to shake things up in android land no matter what google says about continuing to you know android being open and continuing to work with their different partners and no matter what the htc's and samsung's of the world said earlier this week in the form of very short very dry very similar sound and can quotes there's no getting around the fact that if google owns motorola Motorola's can have a big leg up in terms of android development in the coming years and i wouldn't be surprised at some point I don't know that Android will ever officially go down to just a one vendor system that motor will be the only android vendor but I would not be surprised as we get into 2012 to see the higher end android devices coming first from motorola so what are these other companies do Samsung HTC already invested at least a little bit in Windows Phone 7 Samsung has also got their bada operating system you know not not for the Americas but they've got that going on as well so they have a lot of experience obviously it's a huge company but they've got a lot of experience even just Samsung well in software development they've got their whole TouchWiz system for the tablets and the phones we've got their whole bottle thing they've got you know Samsung App Store and now the media hub stuff where you can rent buy music and movies and all that stuff HTC very similar thing they don't have their own OS but sense is pretty extensive at this point and they also have been making some some purchases lately obviously Beats Audio they've been doing stuff with onlive some other you know software services companies they have their own thing going now with you know buying and renting movies and all that sort of stuff so they have to be sort of wondering both of these companies but I think HTC in particular has to really be wondering do we make a move do we need to have our own operating system do we pull back from Android do we put more into Windows Phone 7 I don't even know something like sense is going to be you know allowed by Microsoft level and a viable move a differentiator so what do they do here and I don't know I don't know that you know HTC isn't going to if they bought webOS if they were able to buy worthless that's even on the table there I'm going to take it and like all the sudden overnight start cranking out web OS smartphones is not that easy but they they're just they're uniquely positioned very popular they've been profitable lately and they've been killing it lately they make really good hardware and they know how to develop software and they even now have shown some chops over you know the past six months to a year in particular and knowing how to brand and market themselves Samsung obviously you know similar thing but i can see HTC you know really wondering is this a chance to and who knows what they've got in the works who knows what they've gotten the HTC skunk work labs skunkworks labs and if they've been you know they've been working on a full-fledged operating system because they've been doing since long before android you know you go back into the days when i when i used to do this for that other company and i remember those those first HTC Sense phones you know they've been building phones for a long time and programming software for a long time so they may have their own operating system or pieces of it in the works already but if they own an operating system and they didn't have to rely on google or microsoft for that matter or they could just pull back and they could keep manufacturing phones for those companies is a straight OEM but then also have their own IP that they could just do with what they wanted and never have to worry about are we going to get the support from google that we really need to stay competitive we gonna get from Microsoft or as Microsoft going to give it to nokia first is google going to give it to motorola first or for that matter you know is microsoft now feeling like with whole stuffs gone this week filming wow we need to make our own hardware and house we got to either you know firm things up the nokia thing goes deeper or look at doing something with rim or who knows what really interesting time you know we people always joke or not joke it used to be that summer was the dead time the quiet time in consumer tech in a mobile especially august quiet month not anymore man this week is just been crazy you know r.i.p palm and I guess our IP the touchpad and the pre and the veer and all that stuff again it'll be interesting to see what happens I mean just a week ago you know I was getting PR emails from from age PSP are people saying stay tuned 33 can't wait coming soon so the rug has been pulled out from a lot of people today a lot of people you know looking for new jobs you're thinking about new jobs a lot of people thinking about you know switching from web was to a different platform and then a lot of people wondering what's going to come next house it's going to shake up the industry I don't know I do think we'll wind up seeing something done with webos HP spent too much money to just write this whole billion-plus dollar acquisition off that quickly but what happens with it remains to be seen it'll be interesting but I for one would love to see a company like HTC pick it up I think they're well suited stay tuned whatever happens we'll cover it and you know I'll find something else to get fired up about but right now where's my I'm a little sad I don't want to carry this thing around and no you used to shine my head that said we're giving a bunch of stuff away so I there's good news there's bright skies we're giving a bunch of stuff away on the site starting depending on when you're watching this starting tomorrow so we'll announce it on youtube check out the site as well we've got some great sponsors lined up we're doing giveaways for the next like four or five weeks at least and now we've got something cool we were working on for a while it's going to kick off after that so we got you covered Palmer no palm webos or no webos beats audio note beats audio in your HP laptop whatever happens don't worry about we'll bring you the news we'll bring you the good time to bring you the bad times I've got some giveaways for you from our lovely friends in the industry so check back very very soon for that and as always much more coverage of everything the phones the news the rumors all that stuff on TechnoBuffalo calm and John's headed over to Germany soon to cover IFA that's going to be awesome so palm webos we hardly knew you palm we knew for a long long time I remember when I got a palm 7 review unit way back in the day palm 7 Palm Pilot this is one that had to flip up antenna that thing was not good-looking but I was working at calm New York at the time and we were renting an office to LA like ridiculous fancy waste money custom office was finished being built out and we wound up having to work from home for a couple weeks because the lease was up in the first place but the new place wasn't ready and so I was able to finagle a palm 7 review unit because I was writing for this little website called powerbook Central and I remember walking around the streets of Manhattan with this thing being like oh man I could work from anywhere so I've got this wireless thing I couldn't really get much done with it but it's still kind of cool so soft spot in my heart for palm for webos obviously we miss you but whatever's next we'll be there see you next time everybody you