One of the shockers at the HP event is that these two guys (Todd Bradley and Jon Rubenstein) fired Microsoft.
Whoa?
Well, they announced that the WebOS behind the TouchPad and other devices is being ported to laptops and other form factors.
Imagine telling me 10 years ago that HP would announce a family of products that aren’t running on Windows.
Whoa!
So, as soon as I got together with HP’s CTO, Phil McKinney, after the demos were over that’s what I asked about. His answers are telling.
Scobleizer 
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this is the first REAL competitor of the iPad but ONLY if the price will be VERY competitive but HP doesn’t own the domain name TouchPad.com that has been registered in May 17, 1998 by another (and clearly VERY lucky) guy!
http://whois.domaintools.com/touchpad.com
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Yep, easily missed bombshell at the very end… things were slowing down from what I could hear on the liveblogs, the preso was getting a bit long. And then this!
Sounds like HP just threw down the gauntlet in every possible way: 1) If this doesn’t get developer interest now (with millions of PCs/Laptops as potential new targets beyond any success/failure of the TouchPad itself), then nothing will. 2) Microsoft is on notice. Will they try to retaliate for this “insubordination”…
I think this is so bold yet also so risky a bet, that HP may have no choice but to price the TouchPad so competitively to the iPad that they may have to run it as a loss-leader initially, until their mfct. cost can be brought down with scale. I’d say anything over $399 (for the Wifi only) is a non-starter, and cheaper would be better. $349. Even $299.
I’d say at $299 HP would have a real foot in the door, but can they afford to do it?!
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It must be refreshing for HP to not feel like a sidekick to MS, but developers are already complaining about building for iPhone and the many versions of Android. It will be interesting to see if HP can develop both consumer and developer interest with their devices.
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Sorry, that’s not what they are planning on doing. They are going to build something akin to the Chrome OS so that they can sell laptops without ANY Windows running, which will save them something like $50 per machine, which turns into more than $100 at retail. That’s now significant.
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