Jon Rubinstein sends message to HP staff; Addresses TouchPad reviews
In an internal email sent out to HP staff, Jon Rubenstein (Senior Vice President and General Manager, Palm Global Business Unit) has reached out to his employees to address a growing concern from the reviews of the HP TouchPad …
Context & Ripple Effects
HP brought the TouchPad to market at a starting price of $499.99 using Palm-developed webOS, after deliberately declining to use Android. The Palm acquisition made the tablet a test of HP's ability to turn its $1.2 billion purchase into a viable mobile platform.
Rubinstein's staff message responds to concern over early reviews at a point when the product's app catalog was already identified as a competitive weakness. The internal intervention matters because webOS depends on HP keeping its Palm organization aligned behind a product whose software ecosystem needs rapid improvement.
First-order effects
- HP's Palm Global Business Unit faces immediate pressure to translate review feedback into changes that improve the TouchPad experience and address the app shortfall.
- Rubinstein is using the message to hold the Palm team around HP's webOS strategy rather than treating negative reviews as an external marketing problem.
Second-order effects
- Developers become more consequential to HP's tablet effort: a stronger app catalog is necessary for the TouchPad to compete effectively, making webOS's ability to attract software support central to product demand.
- HP's decision not to use Android raises the cost of weak TouchPad reviews, because the company cannot lean on Android's established application ecosystem while it builds webOS.
Third-order effects
- The TouchPad illustrates the broader challenge of converting an acquired mobile software team into a platform business: hardware spending alone cannot substitute for sustained developer and application support.
- If HP continues to pursue webOS as a distinct platform, product feedback and ecosystem traction—not tablet specifications alone—will determine whether the Palm acquisition creates strategic leverage.
The trend: Tablet competition is increasingly a contest between software ecosystems, with proprietary platforms needing developer support quickly enough to justify their hardware investment.