HP TouchPad another geek tablet failure as iPad 3 tackles mainstream

In the end, the HP TouchPad never had a chance. It was Hewlett Packard’s RC Cola to Apple’s iPad Coke and Samsung’s Android Pepsi. And with the HP TouchPad gone in a brief blaze of geek praise and mainstream shunning ultimately adding up to a whole lot of nothing, the battle is now on between the iPad 2 (soon to be iPad 3) and a contingent of Android-based tablets led by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. We’ll ignore, for the moment, that the Tab borrows so startlingly from the iPad’s hardware design that Apple has successfully managed to get it banned from store shelves in an increasing number of nations and regions. Even as that behind the scenes battle rages, another more fundamental one plays out each time a customer sets foot in a store which sells tablet products: will they go mainstream with the iPad 2, or will they go geek with the Galaxy Tab or one of its Android brethren? The answer isn’t nearly as simple as whether the customer is a geek or not.

It’s immediately easy to see, however, why the HP TouchPad never stood a chance. It was the “other” geek tablet, the one which got lost in the shuffle when Android caught a stunning break and was pushed to the forefront by default as the majority of cellphone carriers had been squeezed out of the iPhone and had to offer their customers something as an alternative. The webOS operating system, which powered the Pre (then owned by Palm) was only available on the Pre itself, which no one among the mainstream wanted. Android, in contrast, was available for free and could be slapped onto any in-house hardware the carriers came up with. And so Android became the overwhelming “Brand B” smartphone choice among mainstream consumers who were on non-iPhone carriers, and that in turn gave the platform enough momentum that geeks ultimately chose it over webOS as well. It didn’t help that after Palm failed as a company and HP acquired its assets, the latter didn’t manage to get the TouchPad tablet to market until just last month, by which time it was too late to make a difference. But what of this brewing iPad vs. Android battle?