After Spurning Android, HP May Offer Windows 8 Tablets
For Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad tablet, which heads to market on Friday, the company avoided using Android at all costs. Well, actually, at a very specific cost: HP spent $1.2 billion last year to acquire Palm, which helped develop the TouchPad's slick software, WebOS.
Context & Ripple Effects
HP has been steering away from Android since at least July 2010, when reports surfaced that its Android tablet project was tabled. The company instead put its weight behind webOS, acquired through last year's $1.2 billion Palm purchase, and positioned the TouchPad — shipping Friday — against Apple with executive claims that it will be better than the number-one tablet.
The new wrinkle is a report that HP may also offer Windows 8 tablets once Microsoft's next OS arrives. That would mean HP running two non-Android tablet strategies in parallel — its own webOS bet plus a return to Microsoft for slate hardware — rather than joining the Android crowd of PC makers.
First-order effects
- The TouchPad launches Friday as the sole carrier of HP's webOS investment, meaning the $1.2 billion Palm outlay succeeds or fails on this device without an Android fallback.
- If the Windows 8 tablet plan materializes, HP's product line splits between an in-house OS and Microsoft's, forcing the company to court developers and partners for both.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft stands to reclaim a marquee PC maker for tablet hardware that might otherwise have drifted to Android or stayed with webOS, strengthening Windows' hand in slates.
- Google's tablet push misses one of the largest PC OEMs entirely, leaving other manufacturers to carry Android into the market HP is bypassing.
Third-order effects
- HP's sequence — cancel Android plans, spend $1.2 billion on an operating system, then reportedly hedge with Microsoft — signals that PC makers treat owning or securing an OS as the decisive tablet variable, not the hardware itself.
- If more large OEMs follow HP's either-proprietary-or-Windows pattern, the tablet market could consolidate around fewer operating-system ecosystems than the smartphone market, squeezing out third options like webOS unless they win quickly.
The trend: PC manufacturers are treating tablet operating systems as the strategic bottleneck, hedging between in-house platforms and Microsoft's next release rather than defaulting to Android.