CrunchPad Being Re-branded As JooJoo

adeelarshad82 writes to tell us that Fusion Garage seems to be ignoring the drama surrounding the "CrunchPad" and is planning to launch their "JooJoo" tablet this Friday at midnight. Unfortunately, the device will be a long way from the imagined $200 price point, weighing in at a hefty $499. "The JooJoo comes in black and has a capacitive touch screen, enough graphic power to deliver full high-definition video, offline capabilities, and a 4GB solid-state drive, though 'most of the storage is done in the cloud,' Rathakrishnan said. He promised 5 hours of battery life. In a demo during the webcast, the device powered on in about 10 seconds, and showed icons for web-based services like Twitter, Hulu, CNN, and Gmail, though the JooJoo will not come pre-loaded with any apps, Rathakrishnan said. Scroll through them with your finger as you would on the iPhone. In terms of the ownership drama, Rathakrishnan said that TechCrunch editor Arrington has created an 'incomplete and distorted story.'"

Comments

JooJoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're going to go with silly names, then I think they should've chosen the MoJo. That way you can "get your MoJo" or "get your MoJo working" with relative ease. It's got way more marketing potential than JooJoo.

Price

[teslafreak]

At $200 I would be all over this (even though it sounds like it was bred from a bit of dirty business dealing). For $499, I would rather buy a laptop and have the keyboard.

Re:Price

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us can afford that kind of money on toys and gadgets. If early adopters like us don't buy these things, people moaning about price will never get them once new tech hits and economies of scale hit. You'd think someone that reads an apple fanboy site like this would already know that.

Re:Price

[Duradin]

I doubt Apple would release something with a measly 4GB storage (the smallest "current" touch is 8GB at $199) and a pitiful 5 hour battery life for a device of that size.

A 64GB touch is $399. Having one scaled up to that size with some beefed up specs would make $500 a reasonable price point.

Conspiracy!

[pwnies]

The entire marketing drama behind all this was all a ploy. Call me crazy, but think about it: Market a new device that does some amazing stuff at a ridiculously low price. So low that you could never make a profit. Wait til all the news sites pick it up. Then stage a coup. During that coup have a takeover, and re-release the device at a sensible price under a different name. Free marketing.

Brb gotta go make a tin foil hat now.

Re:Tablet market seems like the ultimate niche

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree 100%.

The TC1000/1100 from HP totally did it right:

TC1100 with keyboard behind tablet
TC1100 with keyboard under tablet

It was such a great configuration. And to add bonus points, the keyboard was completely detachable!

Re:Tablet market seems like the ultimate niche

[PCM2]

Yeah, but e-book readers are apparently the hot item for the Holidays this year. If you can sell a device with a slow-refreshing screen that only does 16 levels of grayscale and supports no applications except a document viewer and (maybe) a stripped-down Web browser for $260, why wouldn't people be willing to buy a more fully-featured device for a similar price? I've been in the market for some kind of tablet as a secondary computing device for a long time, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Note I said "similar price," though. At $500 this thing is definitely too expensive to succeed. Spending more than a few hundred dollars on a device that will never be more than a satellite client seems more than a little prodigal -- but something like a Nokia n810 with an 8" screen would be welcome if the price was right.

Cautious

[SEWilco]

I do like the Fusion Garage explanation of the situation. I look forward to Arrington's response.

Re:Cautious

[atamido]

Ooh, just found this in the Google Cache of Fusiongarage's blog (blog is now removed).

From January 19th, 2009

There is an air of excitement permeating through Fusion Garage at the moment. Michael Arrington of Techcrunch just wrote an update on the Techcrunch Tablet Prototype B.

It’s our software that is running on the tablet as demonstrated in the videos embedded in the article. We continue to work with Louis Monier on the feature set and the user experience. We are thrilled with this progress and would like to take the opportunity to thank Michael and Louis for giving us the opportunity to work with them on the Techcrunch Tablet.

Its early days yet but we are big believers of the Browser As An Operating System and the Techcrunch Tablet Initiative.

A nice way to begin 2009 here at FusionGarage !

And then February 4th, 2009

The collaboration with the Crunchpad project happened as a result of meetings we had with Mike Arrington and co, subsequent to TC50. We worked closely with Louis Monier in getting the software in shape for the hardware prototype B. We continue to work with them in getting the software in shape to make crunchpad a easy to use device. This is where we stand as of prototype-B: (Details over at TechCrunch’s update )

Then from the PCMag piece today,

Simply put, however, Arrington was unable to deliver, Rathakrishnan said. As a result, Fusion Garage completed the development of the OS, hired the necessary expertise to complete the hardware side of the equation, solved remaining technology issues, and worked on arrangements with OEMs.

Fusion Garage secured funding from its shareholders, which now totals $3 million, he said.

Rathakrishnan acknowledged that "many conversations" did take place with Arrington and that Arrington set up CrunchPad Inc., which would have been a vehicle for distribution of the device, but "ultimately nothing came out" of that. No contracts of any kind were ever signed, he said.

"TechCrunch didn't contribute a single line of code," Rathakrishnan said. "It was Fusion Garage that brought the device from the dead."

That doesn't sound very consistent with the blog posts.

Video conference

[tulmad]

If you saw any of the video conference (live blog at http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/07/fusion-garage-crunchpad-video-conference-liveblog/), that dude even looks like a scheister.

Didn't the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

[snap2grid]

...call a disaster a "whole joojooflop situation"?