Google bought Motorola Mobile for 12,5 Billions $.
HP leave the PC market (WebOS only?)

What's next?

Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 19-Aug-2011 at 07:53 AM.

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retired

@AmigaBlitter

Some links: http://www.osnews.com/story/25085/Breaking_HP_Discontinues_Operations_for_webOS_Devices_

http://www.osnews.com/story/25064/BREAKING_GOOGLE_ACQUIRES_MOTOROLA

Tom is having busy vacation.

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@AmigaBlitter

As a Palm Pre owner i'm gutted about webOS. In the time that I've had my Pre, my wife has had a BlackBerry and an iPhone, and I always preferred webOS. Also, loads of my friends and work colleagues have Android phones, and they never seemed as nice to use.

I was going to save up and buy a Pre 3 early next year. Maybe i'll be able to get one cheap on eBay now....

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Playstation Network ID: xeron6

@xeron

I just discovered it in a commercial today. Seems a waste as Russell Brand was advertising it. They really blew the budget then!

Imagine if an Amiga machine was advertised but never came out. In our communuty it's almost as big. Wait that's happeened a number of times.

@AmigaBlitter

Quote:

What's next?

Windows as a GUI for Linux? (Winux?)

I'm sorry my cristal ball is currently a bit blurred and vague, so all I can do currently is opening a jar of 'wishfull thinking' and lather it up with some pipedreams.

OldFart

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@OldFart

http://www.ehow.com/how_4910989_clean-crystal-ball.html

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@AmigaBlitter

Quote:

What's next?

Atari buying Amiga Inc

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Make Amiga Great Again

@Fransexy

Quote:

Fransexy wrote: @AmigaBlitter Quote: What's next? Atari buying Amiga Inc

Atari has more money probably...

I'd like to see RIM buy Amiga. After all, they need a computer platform now to really compete with Apple!

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@xeron

Quote:

xeron wrote: @AmigaBlitter As a Palm Pre owner i'm gutted about webOS. In the time that I've had my Pre, my wife has had a BlackBerry and an iPhone, and I always preferred webOS. Also, loads of my friends and work colleagues have Android phones, and they never seemed as nice to use. I was going to save up and buy a Pre 3 early next year. Maybe i'll be able to get one cheap on eBay now....

I felt pretty jaded too as I was looking into working as a promoter as part of a company contracted by HP to promote webOS products that started hiring a only few weeks ago.

But look on the bright side you can now buy a TouchPad for virtually the same price as one of those electronic picture viewers.

Also head of the WebOS unit states that the official application market and remote services will remain active for existing devices. Here's to hoping the development community remains active enough to figure out whats in store. Perhaps someone can finally make a touch centric UAE?

As for the PC side I can only feel sad for all the jobs that could be lost at service centers across the US and other countries. This is definitely not the right fiscal time for this to happen.

I apologize for the other topic I opened concerning it.

Last edited by ReverseGTR on 20-Aug-2011 at 02:08 AM.
Last edited by ReverseGTR on 20-Aug-2011 at 02:04 AM.
Last edited by ReverseGTR on 20-Aug-2011 at 02:02 AM.
Last edited by ReverseGTR on 20-Aug-2011 at 01:58 AM.

@ReverseGTR

All the places I can find that ship to the UK still list the TouchPad as £350 or £430 :-/ I hoping i'll be able to pick one up for peanuts on eBay.

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Playstation Network ID: xeron6

HP seems pretty crazy: After putting all that money into WebOS & associated devices, they basically give-up as soon as they hit the first (not entirely unexpected) hurdle.

Even Apple had to struggle: The original iPhone only sold well in America (where smartphones were basically unknown before), it failed in Europe & Japan (which already had smartphone markets). It wasn't until the iPhone 2 that it finally started selling well in Europe, and iPhone 3 for Japan.

But it seems we got more crazy CEO (decisions) this year, with Elope at Nokia cancelling Symbian & MeeGo, just as they were starting to sell really well.

Last edited by ChrisH on 20-Aug-2011 at 11:03 AM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 20-Aug-2011 at 11:02 AM.

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@Darth_X

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I'd like to see RIM buy Amiga. After all, they need a computer platform now to really compete with Apple!

Because QNX is not a computer platform, right?

@ChrisH

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But it seems we got more crazy CEO (decisions) this year, with Elope at Nokia cancelling Symbian & MeeGo, just as they were starting to sell really well.

Nokia N9 (Meego) is not released yet. Symbian Anna was released just yesterday. There' s also leaked development version Belle, which is rumoured to be available early next year. People who have tested Belle already says it will make the platform finally better to use. So they're slightly late compared to Android and Apple.

Maybe Windows will give them better chance in USA which is rich country still and easily profitable market area. Of course China and India are bigger markets in total but they have less rich people still to buy expensive smart phones. (Intel hoped to sell more Atom's to mobile market with Meego. But for example Win8 will run on Arm CPU's also.)

But then again Symbian got there finally. And is USA really that important market area alone. (Now Americans will jump on me

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@Tomppeli Quote:

Nokia N9 (Meego) is not released yet.

Ooops, I meant MeeGo was *highly rated* in reviews, and looked like it would sell really well. But Symbian (S^3) *was* selling well though.

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@ChrisH

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HP seems pretty crazy: After putting all that money into WebOS & associated devices, they basically give-up as soon as they hit the first (not entirely unexpected) hurdle. Even Apple had to struggle: The original iPhone only sold well in America (where smartphones were basically unknown before), it failed in Europe & Japan (which already had smartphone markets). It wasn't until the iPhone 2 that it finally started selling well in Europe, and iPhone 3 for Japan.

It was too late for WebOS, even by 2009/10 really, it's got no hope of competing with Android or iOS today.

@xeron

Quote:

xeron wrote: @AmigaBlitter As a Palm Pre owner i'm gutted about webOS. In the time that I've had my Pre, my wife has had a BlackBerry and an iPhone, and I always preferred webOS. Also, loads of my friends and work colleagues have Android phones, and they never seemed as nice to use. I was going to save up and buy a Pre 3 early next year. Maybe i'll be able to get one cheap on eBay now....

I'm gutted cause Futureshop & Bestbuy were blowing them out yesterday for $99.. and buy the time I got online after work they were all sold out! argh!

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@umisef

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umisef wrote: @Darth_X Quote: I'd like to see RIM buy Amiga. After all, they need a computer platform now to really compete with Apple! Because QNX is not a computer platform, right?

Amiga comes before Apple

Last edited by Darth_X on 20-Aug-2011 at 01:33 PM.

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@danwood

Actually, when the original Pre launched, webOS was easily as good as iOS. The only things iOS had over it at the time was the smoothness of its transition animations, and app availability. webOS' interface, service integration, notifications and multitasking were way ahead. Its caught up now, but at Pre launch, the phone really did stand up to the competition.

Also, there was and is a market for people who like fancy touch interfaces, but want a real keyboard. Now there is quite a lot of choice in the smartphone market for that formfactor, but back then, to have that in touchscreen smartphone was rare.

The thing that let Palm down on the launch of the Pre were (in the UK and US at least) going exclusive with the same carrier as the iPhone, and the quality of the HW.

Here in the UK, O2 at the time were the exclusive carrier of the iPhone and the Pre. When people wanted an iPhone, or just a cool new phone, O2 pushed the iPhone. The staff in the shops didn't care about webOS, or really know anything about it. But it really was the first properly credible challenger.

If Vodafone or Orange had picked up the Pre, when people walked in asking for an iPhone, they couldn't sell them one, but they could have sold them this other cool phone. The companies would have much more of an incentive to push the Pre.

The HW reliability issues were solved; I got my original Pre a few months after the original launch, and it is still working great now. But it really didn't do a lot of good for the image of the phone (great OS, shoddy HW), which stuck even after the HW improved.

The reality is that Palm had a GREAT OS, but they didn't have the money or the marketing to succeed.

Then they were bought by HP, and they just made it worse. They messed up at every single point it is possible to mess up; products announced months before they were ready. Products launched with such little fanfare that people discovered them on websites and had to check with HP that it had actually launched. Dreadful advertising (did you see that "everybody on" video with the awful soundtrack?). They launched the Touchpad with a buggy and slow update of webOS.

They really expected to just get a tablet out there with half assed advertising, no training for sales staff, and a tablet the same price as apple's and sell by the bucketload. Incredible.

Its like HP were being run by Bill McEwen...

Last edited by xeron on 20-Aug-2011 at 03:38 PM.
Last edited by xeron on 20-Aug-2011 at 03:31 PM.

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@xeron Quote:

webOS' ... multitasking were way ahead. Its caught up now, but at Pre launch, the phone really did stand up to the competition.

No, WebOS's multi-tasking is still far ahead of the competition: It's the only smartphone OS I know that allows you to have several documents simultaneously open by the same app. And I say that as an Android user (I'm hoping Google will fix this particular oversight).

@danwood
IMHO there is still room for a third smartphone OS today. At least Microsoft is betting on that, or they might as well give up now with Windows Phone 7 (which has only 1% share of phone sales, and probably dropping due to carriers being scared by Microsoft buying Skype).

Last edited by ChrisH on 21-Aug-2011 at 01:31 PM.

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@ChrisH

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WebOS's multi-tasking is still far ahead of the competition

HP seems to be a death knoll for technology. Dec Alpha (once rumored to be a possible future for Amiga) dead. Compaq desktops, dead except for a brand name. They seem to not know what to do with good technology.