After firesale, now HP Touchpads get 6 free apps from HP(blog.palm.com)
blog.palm.com
After firesale, now HP Touchpads get 6 free apps from HP
http://blog.palm.com/palm/2011/08/6-pack.html
33 comments
Did you create your app before or after you heard about HP killing the platform off?
If it was after, what made you not develop any apps when the platform was viable?
This would be a great postmortem question for the HP team - if they had such a compelling development platform, why didn't anyone want to make the effort before they killed the entire thing?
If it was after, what made you not develop any apps when the platform was viable?
This would be a great postmortem question for the HP team - if they had such a compelling development platform, why didn't anyone want to make the effort before they killed the entire thing?
After.
The only reason I didn't create one before was because I didn't think the platform had enough users to make the ROI on learning how to program for WebOS worth it.
The only reason I didn't create one before was because I didn't think the platform had enough users to make the ROI on learning how to program for WebOS worth it.
So now that you know how easy it is to learn to program for webos (html / css/ js) - would the # of users it takes to make the ROI be reduced by enough such that it's ok to sell to an extremely small market?
ie. Since it's so easy to develop for, you will spend very little time/effort/money to learn to develop vs the iphone (which involves apis, objective c, etc) or vs the android (which involves java, etc) - and so it's ok that the market is small, because you can sell less copies to recoup the investment outlay (which was smaller to begin with because of the ease of development).
Does that change the value proposition of the touchpad?
If it does, then this points to a marketing failure on HP's part - they had a perfectly fine product - just needed to get past the initial "knowledge gap" when no one knows anything about the product.
ie. Since it's so easy to develop for, you will spend very little time/effort/money to learn to develop vs the iphone (which involves apis, objective c, etc) or vs the android (which involves java, etc) - and so it's ok that the market is small, because you can sell less copies to recoup the investment outlay (which was smaller to begin with because of the ease of development).
Does that change the value proposition of the touchpad?
If it does, then this points to a marketing failure on HP's part - they had a perfectly fine product - just needed to get past the initial "knowledge gap" when no one knows anything about the product.
new TouchPads in the hands of a bunch of nerds…
I looked for one in local stores and they all told me that eBay hustlers had bought them very quickly after the price drop. Haven't looked on eBay but if true then it's not necessarily the nerds that got them, that could do something useful with them.
I looked for one in local stores and they all told me that eBay hustlers had bought them very quickly after the price drop. Haven't looked on eBay but if true then it's not necessarily the nerds that got them, that could do something useful with them.
To me, this smacks of Palm just continuing executing in spite of Corporate's (ie, Apotheker's) decisive move.
Good for Palm.
Good for Palm.
You have to put a credit card on file to use the promocodes. So, they've just made it much easier for users to impulsively buy other apps in the future, and they've shown people how to use the app store. Not a bad marketing plan!
Personally I planned on making zero webOS app purchases in anticipation of installing Android. But now that my CC is on file, I'll probably have Angry Birds on here by the end of the month. :p
Personally I planned on making zero webOS app purchases in anticipation of installing Android. But now that my CC is on file, I'll probably have Angry Birds on here by the end of the month. :p
Angry Birds is free ;P
Oh! Nice! I may be able to stick to my plan after all then! :)
A part of me thinks that this is whole thing is a marketing gimmick to create a bunch of touchpad fans.
not to create touchpad fans, the touchpad is dead. it's about creating webos fans. what they're doing with the firesale and now with the apps is increasing the value of the platform so they can sell or license it for a higher price
That's a rather clever salvage plan. I would not have thought to try that.
Apotheker wants to make his stupid plan of turning HP into a software company look brilliant. It's not. Building tablets is more profitable than licensing WebOS will ever be. Who'll want it when Android has far more apps available and a very low licensing cost? Even if they manage to extract $12 per device sold, they will have to sell 100 million of them to recover Palm's acquisition cost alone. This is lunacy. I love WebOS, but this is a very bad plan.
Of course it is. The question is: Will it work?
They got me. The touchpad is pretty cool.
I hope so.
"Eligibility Requirements: US-based HP employees, HP reseller partners, HP customers and HP webOS developer partners are eligible to use these App Promo codes. Promo participants require a TouchPad with a current functioning user profile; with credit card purchasing enabled. The promo codes below will expire on August 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM. Promo codes are available for as long as inventories last."
The codes are invalid, it seems that, according to the last sentence, the inventory has run out. Why HP, why?
The codes are invalid, it seems that, according to the last sentence, the inventory has run out. Why HP, why?
received message that promo codes were no longer valid because of exceeded usage.
sent from HP Touchpad
sent from HP Touchpad
Reminds me of a similar let down when a certain tablet computer was sold at a ridiculously low price and quickly became impossible to obtain...
I got the same message.
Same... :-(
i am curious now how much share this firesale gives the touchpad got in q3 2011.
Wow, 6 apps!
I kinda hope it's all marketing hype. But now I want decent, functioning apps for this thing.
I created a legit WebOS app for myself in about 30 minutes. The development of these apps are unbelievably quick since it's just HTML/CSS/JS.
Your entire dev environment is a text editor, a WebKit browser and the inspection pane - the same one built into Chrome/Safari/Whathaveyou.
It'd be a shame to see WebOS completely die off.