Battle between HP and Apple iPad is heating up. I saw this news from sfgate.com. iPad is not yet out in the market but it really attracts attention from other big company.
HP gets Slate ready to battle iPad
by Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
While Apple's iPad faces an onrushing sea of competition when it hits the market April 3, one of the most formidable and intriguing challenges comes from Apple's neighbor, computer heavyweight Hewlett-Packard.
HP, which is planning to release its Slate this year, has been ramping up the marketing for its coming tablet and appears ready to go toe to toe with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' latest creation. In one slick Apple-esque video that appeared just after Apple began its iPad commercial campaign, HP showed off the Slate performing multitouch browsing of Web pages, newspaper sites and maps. Phil McKinney, chief technology officer of HP's personal systems group, has also been making the rounds touting the Slate as a powerful media device.
"We predict users are looking for that consolidated device, that one device they can use for the ultimate content consumption experience," McKinney said in a recent video interview. "The feedback that we got from our customer base is: I want to be able to browse, I want to able to watch movies, I want to be able to listen to my music, I want to read magazines and do books. So the Slate device can give you not only reading capabilities but also give you that rich media."
While the devices share some physical similarities, they are a study in contrasts in technological approaches to the tablet. While Apple and many other rivals are coming at the market using mobile operating systems paired with smart phone processors, the HP Slate takes a computer-based approach: The device will run Windows 7 with an Intel processor, presumably an Atom, which is often used in netbooks. The question boils down to whether a tablet is an oversized smart phone or a slimmed down computer.
"In some ways, Windows and Intel is a safe bet," said analyst Bob O'Donnell of IDC. "You have things that are important for people like Adobe Flash, and a lot of other things that people are used to. The question is how do people use them: like a big smart phone or a totally different way. That remains to be seen."
O'Donnell said the stakes won't be high initially but will grow over time. IDC is predicting that just 6 million tablets will be sold this year, with 2 out of every 3 an iPad. Meanwhile, netbook sales are expected to reach 39 million this year and 45 million in 2011.
Still, HP has plenty to prove in the tablet market. While it has led the world in PC sales, it recorded just $25 million in handheld sales in the most recent quarter. Apple, by comparison, clocked $5.6 billion in iPhone revenue in the most recent quarter.
Jayson Noland, a financial analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., said HP was late to the netbook game and hasn't done anything with its iPaq line of smart phones. But he says the company has a good reputation in computers and has developed its own touch software called TouchSmart, which he said will help HP compete in this space.
"Tablets are more like PCs than cell phones," he said. "I think HP's heritage here lends itself well to a tablet device. This is an opportunity for HP. They haven't shown they can execute in the handset PDA world yet."
HP played up some of the benefits of its computer approach with a video showing how the slate will run Adobe Flash, the Web technology that powers 75 percent of online video. That's sure to be key factor in its face-off with the iPad, which won't support Flash
Read more: sfgate.com
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