Is the Quick Death of Failed Tech Products a Good Thing? 181
Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, HumanEmulator writes "The NY Times reports on how the Hollywood summer-movie business model is being applied to tech products: 'Every release needs to be a blockbuster, and the only measure of success is the opening-weekend gross. There is little to no room for the sleeper indie hit that builds good word of mouth to become a solid performer over time.' New products are being pulled from shelves only weeks after a lackluster release. What if the TouchPad, the Microsoft Kin, or even Google Wave had had more time on the market? Is this blockbuster-or-bust model a good thing for consumers, or for the industry in general?"
Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Example of products that where not smash hits and are still moving forward.
1. Bing. It is still has a small market share but Microsoft keeps putting resources into it and it is growing.
2. XBox. The first XBox didn't make a profit but the 360 looks like it finally has.
3. Windows Phone 7 "I don't think this is ever going to be more than a poor 3rd place myself but they are till pushing it".
4. Android. Remember the G1. It didn't sell that well and was only on TMobile in the US.
5. PS3 After the mad launch rush it sales just slowed. The Wii was the big hit and the 360 was out first and sold well. Sales of the PS3 are still improving even now.
Of the other products mentioned well let's take a look at them
The Kin. It wasn't WP7 it had no real apps, it was tied to an expensive data plan. Yes it stank out of the box. Microsoft really did a good job killing Danger after they spend a pile of money to buy them.
Google Wave. I tried to find a use for the tech but I just couldn't It was kind of neat but didn't have a good use case for a lot of people.
Touchpad. This one was murdered in it's crib. HP bought Palm and then the CEO was kicked out in a scandal. His replacement had no interest in the consumer market. Palm had three products in the works and those where the Pre III, the TouchPad, and the Veer. HP dragged their feet on those and took a year to get them out the door! What??? WebOS is actually are really good OS but HP again shipped it on old hardware! Of course the new CEO is also going to spin of the PC division as well. Of course you have to love HP not wanting to risk the long term investment in Palm so instead they took a 12 billon dollar stock hit.
touchpad firesale hopefully good for webos (Score:4, Interesting)
The touchpad was simply overpriced. If HP had sold it for, say $150 for 16GB, and $200 for 32GB, it may have sold better to begin with. The crazy rate that everyone sold out of all stock means that there are now a whole lot of WebOS tablets in people's hands now. App developers saw a huge spike in downloads after the sale. Getting WebOS out there, people will see what it is like and perhaps not settle for the inferior interfaces of Android and iOS.
HP's own tablet making may be dead. WebOS isn't quite done yet. Wouldn't it be cool if Dell got into the tablet business and licensed WebOS for them...
Re:touchpad firesale hopefully good for webos (Score:5, Interesting)
No it was priced right according to iSuppli who did the teardown. If HP sold it at $150 there would have been a loss on each device sold.
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx [isuppli.com]
They probably COULD have saved money somewhere, but they already chintzed on the plastic in the back.
The real problem is there were no apps. There was no real push by Palm OR HP on gaining developers. At least not one like there should have been. Plus the SDK was REALLY late. By that time, Palm was already dead in the water, HP picked them up and did NOTHING with them.