The TouchPad from HP heads to market on Friday, that’s today. It looks pretty cool, and Jason Snell has an optimistic review at Macworld, with many points to recommend it. WebOS opens the door to Web Standards developers, which may deepen the wealth of apps. HP has built ‘HPplay’, a Mac app that solves the problem of getting music and movies onto the device. Well, for Mac owners.
Controlling both software and hardware is emerging as best practice for delivering high quality smaller screen devices, in recent times in the media’s stories. Austin Carr discusses this over at Fast Company and makes some notes on HP’s relationship with Microsoft and potentially Windows 8, and the conspicuous lack of contact with Android.
Richard Kerris is HP’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations. Jim Dalrymple interviews Richard Kerris at The Loop and the story lead is that Apple is not TouchPad’s target. Furthermore, the strategy from HP is a long term one, and may focus on the enterprise space. Another emerging theme, is that there can be more than one winner.
The embattled Research In Motion are having their dirty laundry aired, Jonathan S Gellar publishes and Open Letter to RIM Senior Management at BGR. Some time ago Michael Mace and more recently Horace Dediu have provided plenty of analysis and ammunition. RIM gave a tight lipped response, then agreed to consider at least one major criticism, splitting Chairman roles.
Nielsen Wire takes a break from the marketshare-battle winning-losing commentary, stands back and notes simply that smartphones are growing incredibly quickly. Basically in the last quarter, more tha half of the purchases were smart phones not feature phones, representing a 34% increase on the previous year.
The article does note Android flattening, iPhone growing again (probably due to Verizon) and RIM is shrinking. However, interesting research by Strategy Analytics concludes the BlackBerry still dominates US companies choice of mobiles at 72%, iPhone at 49% and Android at 42%.
Skype brings Video Calling to Android Phones but in the first phase of the launch just four phones are supported, the HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia pro and the Google Nexus S. Free phonce calls abd video calls to Android, iPhone, Mac, Windows PCs and even TVs.
Now, where is my JetPack?
In exciting news, a new book from SitePoint went on sale. Build Mobile Websites and Apps for Smart Devices by Earle Castledine, Myles Eftos and Max Wheeler is available now. Add that to your shelves next the HTML5 CSS3 and you’re all set. We will continue to publish the remainder of Chapter 4 of Build Mobile Websites and Apps for Smart Devices here at BuildMobile over the coming weeks.
