HP Needs to Stock Up on WebOS Apps
Email
Print
Other enterprise
management features that HP already supports in other platforms are likely
to make an appearance. You can expect support for Office applications, encryption,
file sharing and peer-to-peer communications. There's no word yet on whether
you'll be able to beam messages between devices as you could with Palm
organizers.
Some sources are reporting that HP will be offering
significant amounts of cloud-based storage-perhaps as much as 50GB-that users
will be able to share between WebOS devices. This will eliminate the need to
keep separate copies of media such as photos, music or e-books on each device
as you do with Apple's devices. On the other hand, it would mean that you would
have to have some sort of wireless connection when you wanted to access this
material, which kind of leaves out using material in the cloud when you're on
an airline flight, for example. With luck, there will be a way to download the
content you're going to need on your flight before you take off.
Until someone actually gets to use the device, we don't
know for sure whether it will sport features such as the iPad's accelerometers
that let the screen change orientation when you move the device. There's also
no word on whether Amazon will offer a version of Kindle for the new tablet,
although it's hard to believe it won't.
It's also not known what HP and Palm have in mind for a
WebOS app store. Without a healthy supply of applications designed for this
platform, HP's tablet will find competing against the iPad and the various
Android tablets very difficult indeed. Right now the existing supply of WebOS
apps is pretty limited. But will HP have a plan in place to make a large number
of widely diverse applications available when the device ships? HP isn't
saying, and there's been a dearth of rumors in that area, which makes one
suspect that application support may be lacking, at least initially.
It's worth noting, however, that HP has been down this
tablet road before. Its Windows tablets may not have set the world on fire, but
they've been steady sellers for a very long time. One has to believe that this
experience will count for something. Right now, however, we just don't know
what that might be.
Wayne Rash is a Senior Analyst for eWEEK Labs and runs the magazineÃÃÃs Washington Bureau. Prior to joining eWEEK as a Senior Writer on wireless technology, he was a Senior Contributing Editor and previously a Senior Analyst in the InfoWorld Test Center. He was also a reviewer for Federal Computer Week and Information Security Magazine. Previously, he ran the reviews and events departments at CMP's InternetWeek.He is a retired naval officer, a former principal at American Management Systems and a long-time columnist for Byte Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Plane & Pilot Magazine and The Washington Post.
