HP’s TouchPad Play Is To The Enterprise

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He makes a parallel with the early days of the PC, where Apple had a strong lead. “Once the market figured out what the demand was, Apple moved very quickly from the number one position to a point where they were really challenged to stay in that business.”

“Apple is very good at defining a market, and it’s been very successful,” said Wohl. “But there are a couple of reasons why we can be successful.”

Apple’s penetration of the business space is poor, Wohl said, though he conceded it has been increasing massively – but only because it has the only really successful tablet device.

A third option?

“We think the market is clearly looking for a third alternative to the two operating sytems that are out there – iOS and Android,” said Wohl.

Really, we asked. What is the evidence for that?

“We feel we are listening to a developer community that is looking for a more open and co-operative relationship with the manufacturer that is different from what they are seeing with iOS,” said Wohl. “Our intent with WebOS is to be very open with the developer community, in the true spirit of HP, where we leave the doors of the garage open [HP was founded in a garage], and let people have access to the tools.”

If you are open, we asked, isn’t  HP just Android, but without the developers and the apps?

“WebOS is the only OS designed completely for the Internet and for the connected experience,” he said. “Because of that, because web development skills are much more prevalent, we think this is going to be really attractive, not only to the development customers, but also to commercial customers who have a lot of web development talent in-house.”

The TouchPad has a robust developer toolkit which will allow users to port in applications, he said, giving one interesting example: “There seems to be some excitement about Angry Birds. The Angry Birds people [Chillingo] were given the WebOS toolkit and they  completely ported the app in less than four days.”

And indeed, Angry Birds turned out to be one of the 300 or so apps available on the TouchPad at launch date.

A business-focused tablet

The big plan, though, is to take the TouchPad to business people where, as he said, Apple is weak. Business people want a device that turns on quickly, helps them consume information, and make quick responses to emails, he said. The iPad does this, but Apple doesn’t understand business users.

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