New CEO Meg Whitman is re-evaluating the decision to both kill of their entire PC division and the HP TouchPad. The first tablet issued by HP received a lukewarm response by the media and experienced lackluster sales in the retail sphere. It was not until the device came down to $99 was everyone breaking down doors to find one. HP has told Fox News that the HP TouchPad may live on with Windows 8.
HP Developers are busily creating proof of concept devices that run the latest iteration of the touchscreen friendly Windows 8 OS. There are internal discussions going on to resurrect the Touchpad or develop a new model to be released in 2012.
Many industry experts have said that HP is going down the road of pure folly with suspending its PC and Tablet operations. They might have lost a boatload of money with buying WEBOS for two billion dollars, and lost money on the hardware as well, but everyone knows the word TouchPad now. They have built up a name for themselves, for better or worse in the tech sphere and Windows 8 would be the ideal operating system.
Using Windows 8 HP would not have to rely on a development community for all of the applications, the MS OS has copious amounts and it would be a more viable long-term business model.
Currently the TouchPad is being ported to Google Android and stable builds exist to give you a pure Gingerbread experience on the tablet. This is prompting many people to install it on their devices to gain access to more applications and games.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.