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HP Kills ARM-based Windows Tablet, Likely Thanks To Microsoft Surface
MojoKid writes "That didn't take long. HP has publicly confirmed that it has cancelled plans to bring a Windows RT (aka Windows on ARM) tablet to market in time for the Windows 8 debut. The company has decided to focus on its x86 customer base instead. HP spokesperson Marlene Somsak has said, 'The decision was influenced by input from our customers. The robust and established ecosystem of x86 applications provides the best customer experience at this time and in the immediate future.' Sources at HP have confirmed that Microsoft's Surface unveil last week was a huge factor in this decision. HP isn't willing to go head to head with Microsoft when it comes to launching new, unproven products. Abandoning x86 is impossible, but dropping Windows ARM is a way for the computer manufacturer to signal its supreme displeasure without unduly risking market share. It also increases the burden on Surface itself. If other OEMs follow suit, MS could find itself as the only vendor selling ARM-based W8 tablets."
HP's track record with tablets is not all that impressive, but this is a big blow to Windows 8... which frankly *only* makes sense on a tablet unless there is a de-metrofication project going on in the skunkworks.
Having said that.. HP could jump onto Android or even attempt to bring some zombified version of WebOS back from the dead using the ARM platform.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
"If other OEMs follow suit, MS could find itself as the only vendor selling ARM-based W8 tablets."
Everybody else's tablets/notebooks: $1000
Microsoft's + Apple's: $600
Ballmer knows he can't outfox Apple, but HP? All too easy.
Microsoft: Hey OEMs! Thanks for all that market research! We've pinched the ideas and IP we need now! ...
OEMs:
Microsoft: Introducing the new zunepa- Err surface! Yeah!
The robust and established ecosystem of x86 applications provides the best customer experience at this time.
The exact opposite position all the other major players are taking. Well differentiation is ONE market strategy I suppose.
The robust and established ecosystem of x86 applications provides the best customer experience at this time and in the immediate future
Yes, there's no windows apps for arm, and noone will ever write any if there's no hardware or users.
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If only HP had its own OS it could put on those tablets. They wouldn't be relaint on MicroSoft and possibly could sell dozens of them.
HP stands for Halted Projects. Hewlett and Packard must be rolling over in their graves every time HP's incompetent management opens it's mouth.
Why should HP be just another Win Tablet maker, competing not just with Google (and all theirs), Apple, and then Microsoft? I see it as "ok, Microsoft, you didn't give us a heads-up about launching this, so obviously you don't want our help."
Well... I'm actually more surprised that HP refuses to take the lead on ANY consumer-related goods. Or enterprise products/services, for that matter.
Man, I thought for a while that HP might be able to turn it around and get back to its roots of being a kick-ass engineering company, but it's pretty obvious that those days are now gone. I'm pretty sure that even the old engineering fogeys who might have been able to tell the yung'uns about what HP culture was like before have left the ship. At this point, it's just a large computer manufacturing company like Dell and Acer, with some enterprise big iron and consulting thrown in.
Sad to see them go.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
...but if HP can sue Oracle for dropping support for Itanium, shouldn't MS be able to sue HP for dropping it's ARM tablet?
(yes, I know there are other differences, but it would have about as much merit. If you don't understand sarcasm, don't bother responding)
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Gun + Foot = AAAAWWWW
Even HP is smart enough to know that if they do just a little too well competing with Surface, there will be an update to RT that "mysteriously" tanks the performance of the HP product.
Not to worry, anxious to prove they're not up to their old tricks, MS will fix the issue just in time for the post-Christmas sales slump.
Internet bloggers seems to think companies function, the way they would if Internet bloggers were in charge.
So MS announces a competing product without a price and it is instantly: Abandon project?
That is just silly.
The decision to wait and see on WinRT is probably a sensible one. This product is starting out with essentially no ecosystem. HP recently got burned releasing their own tablet with essentially no ecosystem to back it up (Touchpad).
The x86 version would be the only Windows tablet I would consider. WinRT is going to be barren for some time.
It really costs them nothing to wait this one out. I consider that prudence.
Not that I care, because HP isn't likely to be a tablet leader anyway, Asus/Samsung produce better mobile product.
It also increases the burden on Surface itself. If other OEMs follow suit, MS could find itself as the only vendor selling ARM-based W8 tablets.
You say that like it's a bad thing for Microsoft. That's exactly what they want... to be like Apple!
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
This is only the beginning. It's a hint, an appetizer, a mere suggestion of the glorious future about to unfold. Just wait.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And then there's Itanium. I guess we can mainly blame HP for that.
Bruce Perens.
HP already utterly and completely blew it with tablet computing when they made the boneheaded move of cancelling the TouchPad. I bought a new 32GB model on sale for $149 as part of a closeout promotion Micro Center was running. (Basically, if you bought some other HP computer, you qualified for the $149 TouchPad too, and I had to get an HP desktop for my work.)
Despite being an Apple iPad user since day 1, I gained a lot of respect for the product HP had. They copied off a lot of the little things that made Apple successful, while managing to retain their own uniqueness. The TouchStone wireless charging dock was brilliant, for example, and was FAR more elegant than any of Apple's iPad dock solutions. The integrated login of webOS was a great concept as well. (Just create an HP user account and configure all of the online services you want to use with the TouchPad through that master account. Then you're signed in to all of them, or can select the ones you want on and off at any time with virtual switches to slide on or off. Go to the email client and all of your configured mailboxes are pulled up right there. Same for the calendars.) Even their online store had what I thought was an excellent layout -- where you browsed it like a magazine. The home page of the store would welcome you with suggestions of relevant apps you might wish to look at, based on the next holiday coming up or time of year, and there were pages of several featured apps described in more detail as you turned the pages and browsed.
If HP had any sense, they should have realized that the rush to grab up all of these discontinued tablets at blowout prices gave them a window of opportunity. All of a sudden, they had a decent-sized market out there of active users interested in the product! They needed to strike while that iron was still hot, rushing back to look at ways to improve the tablet and re-release a version 2 (hopefully at a reduced price that would keep it competitive -- but one still high enough so the sales would be profitable). From what I heard, there was actually a second TouchPad product almost completed when HP canned the project anyway.
The Palm guys who did webOS were really talented people ... just the type HP needed to actually do something innovative. But in the musical CEO madness, they got thrown under the bus.
HP can spin this any way they like, pretending they're sending Microsoft a message by cancelling support for a new ARM based Win 8 tablet. But come on! I see right through that B.S. Reality is, such a product would lack any real appeal compared to what Microsoft themselves announced. It'd be yet another boring wanna-be tablet in a black plastic case, with too high of a sticker price. Honestly, I can't see why any talented engineers or designers would even make more than a minimal effort working on anything new for HP these days? They just crap all over most of it and cancel project after project without giving them enough time to mature and gain popularity.
I hope EVERYONE does this, leaving Microsoft sitting all alone.
They really aren't needed at this point in the game, and should tread lightly.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Compared to the business acumen the HP board has shown in the last 8 years, I'll take a basement dweller.
Good-bye
I was expecting the usual Microsoft team to get on here and start bashing their longtime partner. Thanks for not disappointing me. See you in the Dell thread!
Wow you make it sound as if Microsoft cheated on their loyal spouse on their 25 year anniversary or something.
These are business entities and do things as long as they make them profits.
E.g. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/09/2015233/hp-to-put-webos-on-pcs-in-2012
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/02/09/2316203/hp-unveils-webos-tablet-plans-webos-computer
I was expecting the usual Microsoft haters to show up and sympathize with poor innovative HP being held back by Microsoft, and you didn't disappoint.
This space for rent.
Maybe HP finally realized that if you're going to run Windows, you're probably going to want to run Windows apps. So yeah, x86 it is. I think Windows on ARM is stupid because it'd be Windows but with less software written for it than Android, iOS, Linux, probably Solaris too lol. They'd be starting from scratch basically so there goes the Windows "run anything" benefit. I don't think surface had a whole lot to do with it.
HP's track record with tablets is not all that impressive, but this is a big blow to Windows 8
Quite the opposite. Window RT is a monumentally stupid idea. HP not supporting it is nothing but good. The level of consumer confusion it will create is disastrous. "Why does this work on your tablet and not mine" why does my tablet not have an arm, or need an arm?
If microsoft wants to gradually trend the market towards having split arm and x86 business at the same time they can do it themselves, no one in their right mind should be producing windows arm anything.
Now microsoft doing it might shame intel into competing better and so on, that's good. But theoretical competition that drives innovation being good isn't the same as confusing users who, for the last 30 years have never understood system requirements and adding a new completely completely unresolvable compatibility problem is really bad for the windows market and stands in opposition to the one thing they're trying to do, which is make a simplified experience for users.
The company you are remembering is now called Agilent, and doing quite well.
HP is the demon-spawn of the Carly.
I doubt it's a blow to windows 8, since they seem to be still committed to the x86 tablet platform.
Frankly, I think most OEM's are scared of Windows RT simply because it looks so much like windows 8, that non tech savvy customers will buy it thinking it has all the capability of windows 8, but will freak out and complain once they realize that its pretty much Windows Phone 8 with a big screen and an incapability to run windows desktop apps.
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I was expecting that too. It would surprise if an HP contingent showed up though. They have more class than that usually.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
About a week and a half ago here on Slashdot, ozmanjusri said "Go learn something" in reference to 7" Allwinner SoC-based tablets.
So I bought one.
Not because I really wanted a tablet, but because I wanted to know why anyone wants a tablet. I had to admit "go learn something" damn well applied to me. Up to now I've avoided tablets because I haven't been able to tolerate the too-weak-for-a-laptop and too-big-for-a-phone form factor. But 7" diag is just at the limits of what fits in the my pocket, so I figured it wouldn't just collect dust, and I'd actually end up doing some learning.
I've had the device for about a week now, and as I suspected, except for one thing about it, I'm not terribly impressed. I sort of knew it would work out like that. Maybe I'm just not a tablet guy, but I'm trying.
But what's that one thing about it that impressed me? I'll give you a hint: it's the same thing that made buying a thing which I suspected I wouldn't like much, not be a crazy thing to do.
It cost me less than a hundred dollars, that's what. It's hardly an awesome computer, but it's a lot of computer for $89. As far as I'm concerned, Google's new $200 tablet is high end and the companies who want $600 for machines that are less capable than an Atom notebook, and less portable than a phone (i.e. not as good as $200 tablets!), are fucking dreaming. $1000 for a tablet? You're off by an order of magnitude, dude.
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Well... I'm actually more surprised that HP refuses to take the lead on ANY consumer-related goods. Or enterprise products/services, for that matter.
Man, I thought for a while that HP might be able to turn it around and get back to its roots of being a kick-ass engineering company, but it's pretty obvious that those days are now gone. I'm pretty sure that even the old engineering fogeys who might have been able to tell the yung'uns about what HP culture was like before have left the ship. At this point, it's just a large computer manufacturing company like Dell and Acer, with some enterprise big iron and consulting thrown in.
Sad to see them go.
All the engineers left when HP split into 2 companies a few years ago. They're still going strong at Agilent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agilent_Technologies
Office will be on the tablets, hard-wired like phone carrier junkware, and it will be a special Microsoft-only build process to install "desktop-quality" apps in the otherwise restrictive Metro environment for the locked-RT.
Also I'm sure they will make it easy to connect to corporate Exchange, and harder for everybody else to connect to corporate Exchange.
Probably a few years ago, Microsoft figured their main competition was Blackberry, but the latter is imploding on its own even without Microsoft's shove.
Microsoft's goal is to have an official Microsoft entry so that large IT departments will have a good excuse to refuse to integrate iPad deeply.
iPad will still take 80% of the profits in the space with 40% of the sales.
All the engineers left when HP split into 2 companies a few years ago. They're still going strong at Agilent
So, the corporation known as HP is the "B" Ark, except the Golgafrinchans actually sent the "A" Ark instead?
This explains a great deal about HP in the last decade-plus.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"HP should consider what's missing in those devices from other manufacturers, find a gap they could fill, make the product different."
Is there any evidence they're going to do anything like this? They will make it different with a sticker. It's the Fiorina way.
If the rumors of WinRT licenses costing $90/tablet are true, then this is the best thing to do. With licensing costs that high HP can't hope to be competitive with Android on the low end. They'll be going up against the iPad and Surface. Why would you want to buy the OS from Microsoft and then have to compete directly against Microsoft, when both of them also have to figure out how to pull the market away from the iPad?
It's insanity to even try.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Will there be a fire sale?
Wintel is dismantling itself.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'd never buy anything HP makes anyway, junk laptops and desktops.
The MS VP in charge of OEM relationships either quit or was fired today, I've seen it reported. He'll take sabbatical the article said, and then resume some other MS executive duty. My own guess would be "inside man at Dell", because they already have an HP guy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Frankly its a damned smart move, the amount of backlash most of us on the ground are seeing towards Win 8 has been pretty nasty and HP doesn't want another touchpad on its hands.
That said if the article we saw on prices the other week is true i think MSFT is about to be bitchslapped back into reality when they find out that 1.-No matter how Ballmer may delude himself they are NOT APPLE and 2.- Without the OEMs putting out Windows products MSFT is up shit creek without a paddle.
I have a feeling that MSFT isn't gonna realize their hubris until they take a real billion dollar bath on win 8, they aren't a hardware company, they frankly have sucked ass the times they have tried selling hardware ( even the X360 cost them a couple of billion in repairs) and if the OEMs are getting the same kind of feedback I've been getting winRT 8 is a big DO NOT WANT. MSFT simply has nothing to offer that the customer can't already get better from Apple or Google. Pissing off your OEMs when X86 has been flatline and you have not one but TWO competitors kicking your ass, one of which is free to use for the OEMs? Not smart MSFT, not very smart at all.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
HP chasing x86 sales and moving away from ARM isn't related to Microsoft's Surface. The OEM's have looked into their forecast models and see x86 as being a "known quantity" with less risk associated with it, especially for enterprise markets they're focused on. Even Apple run's Intel x86 chips on their business machines. With sales margins being what they are, a known quantity is a safer path to follow.
jesus christ metro is no big deal....if you can't adapt to something so simple your kinda pathetic
The only thing really nice about the Nexus tab is its screen and probably the multicore processors. To be sure, that's enough for it to extinguish the Kindle Fire. Even if it's far from being the iPad killer, the Nexus has a good shot at being the most successful Android tablet in the US. Outside the US, especially in south-eastern Asia, you can buy no-name tablets by weird-sounding Chinese manufacturers for half the price in equivalent local currency. A similarly priced Android tablet would contain other stuff like HDMI out and internal 3G.
The WebOS tablet actually had really good hardware. Yes the software was a rev or two from being solid, but it too was really good... everyone should be all the sadder that HP is removed from competing in this space, as they had the ability to do so, just not the will to carry forward what was a good and daring plan.
WebOS had the power to be a solid third place alternative tablet OS, now handed over to Microsoft.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with you about the Touchpad. It had a lot of great ideas, and greta potential.
BUT it was ill-fated, to drop right around the time of the more epic CEO blowouts. At a time when a nascent product line needed vision to carry forward, HP lost all vision and just hand managers heading for the bunkers - a very bad time indeed to be a product just out of the gates in no-mans land with no-one at the top to back you.
That was one of the sadder "what might have been" stories out of all the sad things that have happened to good products over the years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
they aren't a hardware company, they frankly have sucked ass the times they have tried selling hardware
Microsoft actually makes great computer mice, keyboards and joysticks. I love the "Natural" line of keyboards and have been using and recommending them for years.
I don't use or have any use for Microsoft software, but their input hardware is great!
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Apple already has a split of arm and x86 products and it doesn't seem confusing at all to people. People understand that things that run on their iPad don't run on their Air and the world keeps spinning just fine.
I LOVE the ability to run normal windows applications/games on a tablet
If so many other people LOVE the idea of running Windows apps on a device meant for touch input, then why did the past DECADE of Microsoft doing just that not catch on?
I have to admit the Surface looks nice, the keyboard cover looks interesting and it may indeed work quite well (no-one was allowed to try it at the unveiling). But to me it looks stronger as a Macbook Air competitor, than against anything in the tablet space... because you were not planning to buy an ARM version which then would not run your Windows software, right?
The biggest concern I have about surface is that historically devices that try to hedge bets with a million input methods end up being great at none of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with your assessment. Metro is fine. I spend all my time on the desktop anyway. I pin my programs, and I now windows key+F to do a system search for programs and files, and just windows key+type when I need to find something in real time. I do find the filters in start menu search annoying though. I just want a flat search...
and an equally good number of apps
That is absolutely wrong. There are around 200k apps specifically tailored for the larger screen real estate of the iPad. Designing for a larger space makes a huge difference vs. simply having a UI with the same elements in a smaller space that scale up.
The iPad has something like two orders of magnitude more tablet specific applications, it has an amazing lead there - and I really can't see that ending very soon, given that Android needs to have a tablet sales surge first before people start designing many Android tablet specific apps.
It doesn't help Android either that all the oct popular "tablets" are 7" devices, which really are the "oversized iPod Touch" the iPad was ridiculed for being at first; at that size simply scaling up UI's for smaller screens makes some sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only thing really nice about the Nexus tab is its screen and probably the multicore processors.
But that is exactly why I do not think it will fare del against the Fire - even IF Amazon did not deliver a new Fire this year (and I think we can all be sure they will), the thing that drives Amazon tablet sales is the heavy integration with stuff you buy on Amazon - people are used to that with books but they also have a good tie in for music and movies and other video.
So it doesn't really matter if the Nexus 7 has better specs, if the average person cannot make nearly as good use of the thing when the get it home.
It will be a nice tablet for technical users but those people are not driving the tablet market nor a large percentage of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
which frankly *only* makes sense on a tablet unless there is a de-metrofication project going on in the skunkworks.
Wasn't gonna comment... but, say what? From what I can see, Metro makes a decent interface... for tablets. All the hate seems to be for Windows 8 on regular computers.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Good move. If HP were to make Windows RT based tablets, it should be based on Medfield or Fusion, not ARM. That one made no sense, even if MS did not come out w/ the Surface.
How many risks can a company take? As it is, Itanium has cost them significantly, and if they were to go w/ ARM, there would be no end to it. I have no idea whether HP would go w/ an x64 based tablet w/ Windows, but even if it doesn't, that's still a better idea than Windows RT on ARM.
Really speaking, their WebOS tablet was fine - if it was a sellout @ $200, it means that it was something people were willing to buy. There are things that one can't even give away even if it's free. So if HP does want to re-enter the tablet market, it could make the same thing w/ a lower cost BOM, aiming @ that target price. It could get quite a decent marketshare on its own through retail.
Looks like you forgot to drink your kool-aid this morning.
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No one confuses an iPad with a MacBook because Mac* and i* are different brands. iOS and Mac OS X are similarly different brands. They both come from Apple, but they're marketed differently. In contrast, Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT are very similar. Microsoft has a difficult balancing act here, because they want to use the recognition of the Windows brand to encourage people to buy based on familiarity, but if they go too far in this direction then they're going to end up with a confusing mess.
Apple had the advantage that the iPod brand was widely recognised by people who had never bought a Mac, and had only vaguely heard of them. The iPhone and iPad built on this brand. Microsoft can't use something like Windows Zune, because the Zune brand isn't exactly respected. They could try to use the XBox brand, which is quite successful, but isn't associated with anything except games.
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But, Apple doesn't tout their mobile devices as using "Mac OS RT", Apple clearly makes them distinct calling them Mac OS X and iOS, so there's zero confusion over whether things that run on one will run on the other.
Microsoft calling both their tablet-ready OSes "Windows [something]" on the other hand...
If launched earlier things would have been different. The HP touchpad totally annihilates the majority of tablets sold in it's time - with Cyanogenmod it's simply unrivaled in performance vs. cost.
Yup you called it dead balls ons, I'll go one step further, I predict they will start selling off the non-profitable divisions and herniate the company cash wise, then I foresee HP being bought and sold for scrap at some point in the next 10 years. I don't believe huge monolithic organisations are the way to go and this is an example of one of the poorest run of those ( I'm an ex HP employee). HP's time is on a count down to no where, and yes it is sad, but I think it needs to happen.
Don't forget their trackballs. I think their trackball (which they stopped making) is possibly the best designed one I've seen - the scroll wheel sits nicely under your thumb.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
What stops you installing Amazon's apps on the Nexus 7 to get the Amazon integration?
Probably you could do that (although Amazon is using a custom Android build) but that will not help sales, since so few people would know that was possible or be able to do it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have to take that back. One the downright infuriating things about the browser, is that sometimes I'll have something stupid loading that I don't want (usually from a mis-click) and the close-tab widget can be unresponsive for many seconds. It's not just that it takes a long time for the tab to close, but it's a long time before there's even any visual feedback that it "heard" my click, which is particular important on a touch device since they're so fumblesome to begin with, compared to mice and pointers. Once a page is loaded, things seem ok, but during loading .. ugh.
Even so, though, I think this is mostly Android shittiness or its browser's shittiness, not just a limitation of the hardware. Nevertheless, it's part of the overall experience and I don't like it. If you're a "snappiness fanatic" (I mean that in the nicest way possible; we all have our own peeves and tolerances) I think you wouldn't like this machine. OTOH, I can't fit a netbook in my pocket.
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HP's track record with tablets is not all that impressive, but this is a big blow to Windows 8
Quite the opposite. Window RT is a monumentally stupid idea. HP not supporting it is nothing but good. The level of consumer confusion it will create is disastrous. "Why does this work on your tablet and not mine" why does my tablet not have an arm, or need an arm?
If microsoft wants to gradually trend the market towards having split arm and x86 business at the same time they can do it themselves, no one in their right mind should be producing windows arm anything.
WinRT is there because MS knows just too well that the Intel tablet will cost $1000, run four hours on a charge and comes with a stylus to peck at buttons in old Windows software running on a high-res 11" screen. They need to grow some Metro apps, they need to stop the gap until Intel will deliver something more power-efficient. And until then they sell a cheaper, lighter, longer-running ARM tablet, too. Of course this one has no apps at all, but "You can just buy the Intel version." -- "It's too expensive" -- "So buy the ARM version." -- "But it has no apps!!!" -- "What about the Intel version then?"
I bet that at MS they were developing the ARM and the Intel version side by side and couldn't decide which of both to push. Each of them had something they needed and lacked something else they also needed. So they just come with both now.
HP probably knows (or fears) that the ARM version will be dropped in a couple of years anyway. They also think that the Intel version will be the safer bet. It's a PC after all and are they selling PCs or not?
Useful to take photos of documents. A tablet gets used as a replacement for lots of paper stuff and the ability to "scan in" paper and have it on the tablet is nice to have. Using your smartphone for that and transferring the photos is just not the same, especially if you're handling the tablet anyway.