What should WebOS smartphone and tablet owners do now?
HP has turned out the lights on its WebOS smartphones and new tablet, the TouchPad, so what should you do if you’ve already got one of these products?
That’s a good question. Here are a few (somewhat humorous) suggestions from CNET:
Put them on the shelf with their Microsoft Kin (The Kin lasted 48 days on the market before being canceled; the HP TouchPad lasted 49.)
Use your pebble-shaped Palm Pre as a stone in your Zen garden.
Turn your Palm Pixi into a table-leveler. You can put it underneath wobbly tables instead of sugar packets.
Throw it in your junk drawer with your Palm Pilot and Palm Treo.
Put your TouchPad under your pillow and hope the tablet fairy brings you an iPad2
But seriously, this is a sad event for many loyal Palm fans. On Thursday Hewlett-Packard announced that it is discontinuing the sale of devices running WebOS, the operating system that the computer maker acquired from Palm last year. The news means that HP will stop selling the recently launched TouchPad tablet as well as WebOS-based smartphones, such as the Palm Pre 2, HP Veer, and the upcoming Palm Pre 3.
The real reason this matters is that it will introduce doubt into the mind of the consumer. How do I know that this tablet will be around a year from now? Why should I buy this instead of an iPad?