Monday, August 22, 2011

First Day of School and the End of HP's TouchPad

This morning starts a new semester for our college and students.

As I read the headlines of Streaming Media's Website, the first thing that catches my attention is "The TouchPad is Dead." I didn't even know it was alive, and now it's gone.

HP's TouchPad was launched in early July and is now being discontinued and companies such as Best Buy are sending them home (250,000 just from Best Buy). The TouchPad was going to be working with Adobe and the OS was supposed to be a big contender for the iPad so that Adobe could feature its Flash Player on the TouchPad.

One of the most interesting items of the article was this statistic, "A full 80 percent of the tablet devices that Adobe showcased at last October's MAX event either never made it to market, made it to market and floundered, or made it to market and were killed off quickly." This may not bode well for Adobe and the Flash Player, since Apple's iPad still seems to be the forerunner among tablets.

It should be a fun and interesting semester, and I'm sure it will be an interesting rest of the year for technology as well.

-Daniel