Two goodbyes in one week Part 2

If I was Andrew Kelly right now, I'd be banging my head against the table, and cursing Leo Apothker. Two not exactly well known names to start an article with, I'll admit.

Andrew Kelly aka 'The Mattressman' is the CEO of the company by the same name. In a surprising move Kelly has branched out into the potentially lucrative budget tablet market, with the Andypad.

Leo Apothker is CEO of HP, and the man that recently announced the termination of WebOS and the associated hardware, sparking what can only be described as a feeding frenzy on the heavily discounted Touchpad and Palm Pre.

Despite having much of their future centred around the Touchpad just a few months ago, HP has conceeded after poor sales that it simple cannot compete against the iOS, and to a lesser degree in the tablet market, Android. The reason behind the failure of WebOS is ultimately this: a lesser product at an equal price. Considering the component cost, and Apples usual affinity for price premiums, the iPad is surprisingly well priced at £400 for the basic model (don't get me started on the extra £80 for 32Gb of flash memory). They are able to do this, because of their vertical business model; controlling both the hardware and the software allows them to buy in bulk and far in advance of their roadmap, and reap the associated cost savings.

HP should have known that if they were to realistically compete then there must be something amazing to differentiate their tablet from the Ipad 2. As I've said before, in the exact same way as the computer games industry, success in the smartphone/tablet industry is largely attributable to third party support. Apple have this in bags. Hp didn't. HP had a great product in the Touchpad. They could answer questions like 'why would I buy one?' but ultimately couldn't answer 'why would I buy one over an iPad?'.

In my eyes, the only realistic answer would have been: 'Its cheaper'. But it wasn't.

...Until the fire sale! We have seen HP Touchpads flying off the shelves, people around me that have never wanted a tablet before, suddenly had to have one. £89.99? Sign me up! There weren't enough to go around, websites crashed, people queued, and sales employees of electronics retailers started carrying bear mace and wearing badges that said 'We have no HP Touchpads so stop asking'.

The underlying feeling is, that because of a tablets position (Is it a phone? No. Is it a computer? No. Do I have two separate products that already do everything it does? Yes), its something that no one needs, but people do want. For your average joe, they are hard to justify, and especially if they ring in at £400 or more!

Which is where the Andypad comes in. We've seen a large number low cost Android Tablets and all have been pretty terrible in their own way. My favourite is the Next tablet which received universally dismal reviews. The Andypad appears at a glance as if it could fill the low cost Tablet niche that Apple ignore and HP have proved exists. In many ways Andrew Kelly will be cursing the day HP discontinued the Touchpad and took a giant bite out of their target market. However, in doing so they might just have whipped up a hankering for a low cost tablet just days before the Andypads launch.

Two goodbyes in one week Part 1

Sorry! I've been away! I've spent a lot of time writing hardware guides over at Bit-Tech.net forums, but I'm back now and that's what is important.

I can't backfill the last few months with articles that have been drifting round my head, never to be penned, but in the constantly changing world of mobile, yesterdays news is yesterdays news today, so lets look at what has happened just in the last week.

Did you see that AMD just appointed Rory Read as their new CEO? Nope, didn't think so, I read the article a few days ago, but still had to go back to look his name up. Usually a company CEO stepping down is something you end up reading about because The Economist was the paper left on your seat between Kings Cross and Holloway Road, but its interesting to see the kind of mainstream coverage that the inevitable end of Steve Jobs tenure at Apple has garnered. So, love him or hate him you have to respect the work he's done at Apple, and the way they have shaken up the entire mobile industry since the launch of the iPhone. Ultimately, that's the way the industry was headed, but its also fair to say that because of Jobs and Apple we are about 5 years ahead of where we might otherwise have been.

So where do Apple go from here? Despite what I suspect will be minor share price drops, going forward Apple fans have little to be concerned about. Tim Cook, while potentially unable to match Jobs revered status on the catwalk, is an old hand, and it seems unlikely that Jobs would have made a final mistake in his endorsement of Cook, after doing so much right for so many years. Roadmaps will have been layed out, deals for coming generation ARM chips will have been shaken on, and assuming that the iPhone 5 launch goes as planned, we'll see very little that will rock the boat in the next year or so.

What is more interesting, is Apple's continued diversification. Yes, Jobs is a perfectionist, with a real passion for the company, but what really differentiates Apple under Jobs is the way they are so successful at diversification. Apple sceptics will have in their armoury a whole raft of tablets that proceeded the iPad. And yet, none of them enjoyed any kind of mainstream success. Again, maybe the iPad is where tablets would be in 2013, but ignoring the dubious success of Apple TV, what Apple are really losing is Jobs Vision. His ability to take in the landscape and produce a product that is ahead of its time. Sales of the once revolutionary iPod classic are down 17%. No real concern, since Apple has replaced them with the iPod touch, and then the iPhone, but where do Apple go from here, and does the word 'innovative' appear anywhere on Tim Cooks CV?