The HP Touchpad Gets A Video Demo Thanks To SanDisk
HP! SanDisk just crashed your party! Deep in the seedy show that is Computex Taipei, SanDisk is showing off one of its latest partner devices. Yep, they have a fully functional HP Touchpad. — The SanDisk booth rep seems rather excited …
Context & Ripple Effects
The TouchPad's pre-launch drip continues. Since HP announced the TouchPad back in February, the company has kept a steady drumbeat: first app partners and a European launch commitment in May, a claim from HP that the tablet will be 'better than number one' (per the Telegraph), then a leaked QuickSpecs sheet and a rumored June 12 launch date.
What is new here is who is showing the hardware: not HP itself, but SanDisk, which has a fully functional TouchPad running video demos in its Computex Taipei booth as one of its 'latest partner devices.' The framing matters because HP CEO Léo Apotheker has separately said HP may license webOS to partners beyond its own tablets, smartphones and PCs — making third-party showcases of HP silicon an early test of how the webOS ecosystem travels outside HP's own walls.
First-order effects
- HP gains independent hands-on validation for the TouchPad ahead of its rumored June 12 launch — a working unit on a partner's booth floor does credibility work HP's own marketing cannot.
- SanDisk gets to anchor its flash-storage story to one of 2011's highest-profile tablet launches, using the TouchPad as proof of its partner-device portfolio at Computex.
Second-order effects
- If HP follows through on Apotheker's stated openness to licensing webOS, other component makers and OEMs face a choice between showcasing HP software as partners or treating webOS devices as competition at the same trade-show floors.
- Rival tablet vendors exhibiting at Computex now share floor space with a visible webOS unit, sharpening the side-by-side comparison shopping among carriers and retailers walking the show.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — a platform owner letting supply-chain partners do the demonstrating — points toward webOS being positioned as licensable infrastructure rather than purely HP-proprietary software, a structural bet on ecosystem breadth over hardware exclusivity.
The trend: Tablet platform builders are increasingly staging pre-launch credibility through component-supplier partnerships at trade shows, turning the supply chain into an extension of the marketing push.