HP Slate tablets running Android Jellybean hit the market
Hewlett-Packard's latest Android tablets with multiple screen sizes are available through the company's website. — HP Slate 7 Extreme — The tablets run Android 4.2, code-named Jellybean, and are listed at the company's tablet page.
Context & Ripple Effects
HP's tablet history is a loop of reversals: the company shelved an Android slate back in 2010, regrouped around a Windows-plus-stylus approach with the $699 Slate 2 in late 2011, then committed again to Google's OS in May 2013 with the $479 SlateBook x2 detachable. Shipping a multi-size Slate line on Android 4.2 straight from hp.com is that commitment becoming a standing product family rather than a one-off experiment.
The timing tracks the market data in the corpus: Canalys projected in November 2013 that Android would take roughly 65% of 2014 tablet shipments against Apple's 30%, which is precisely the pool a volume PC maker like HP needs to fish in. That the story ran on eight syndicated outlets — Engadget, Ars Technica, Digital Trends and others — reflects interest in whether HP can finally stick in a category it has twice abandoned.
First-order effects
- HP is now selling Android hardware directly against its own Windows tablet lineage — the Slate 2's $699 stylus formula gives way to cheaper Jellybean slates in multiple screen sizes sold through the same storefront.
Second-order effects
- HP's dual-platform posture puts pressure on Microsoft, whose tablet strategy had counted HP among its flagship PC-maker allies; every Android SKU from a top Windows OEM erodes the exclusivity assumption behind Windows tablet distribution.
Third-order effects
- If Canalys's Android-dominated shipment forecast holds, commodity tablet economics push PC vendors toward thin-margin, size-and-SKU competition — while corpus reporting that Android's malware profile increasingly resembles desktop Windows suggests HP inherits a consumer-security burden it never faced selling Windows machines with enterprise AV contracts attached.
The trend: Volume PC makers are hedging into Android tablets as Google's platform converts its smartphone majority into a projected tablet-shipment majority, forcing erstwhile Windows-first OEMs to run both stacks.