For many followers of the tablet wars, the death of HP’s TouchPad was a foregone conclusion. But I had high hopes. To follow the common meme there was no way that HP, an enterprise-facing company that sells system integration services and ink cartridges, was going to make a dent in Apple Computer’s sales of iPads and other iOS-based devices as they win the hearts and minds of everyday people (as opposed to those everyday people in their roles as enterprise employees).

On the negative side, the TouchPad has been victimized by a flurry of bad reviews and complaints about pricing. On the positive side, Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility fueled speculation that competing mobile device manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, LG and other Android adherents, might look to HP and WebOS to provide a competitive product.

To compete with Apple and Google (cum Moto) HP would have to be at parity or better with their basic offerings, in terms of basic functionality. Both the iPhone and Android phones are speech-enabled both from the home screen and the “search box.” Apple relies heavily on Nuance, while Google benefits from its own extensive investment in both speech recognition and natural language processing. Collectively, they provide a pleasing and effective user interface.

Speech recognition – from voice dialing to form filling and search – has been on the WebOS wishlist dating back to rev 2.0. Version 3.0.0 offered some semblance of voice dialing, but (though I admittedly have not had a demonstration unit to play with) there is no native speech recognition. There is only a short list of independent, embedded speech processing software providers. By acquiring SVOX and now Loquendo, Nuance has steadily reduced their ranks. With WebOS under fire from on so many other fronts (from short battery life to a paucity of applications), the inability to support spoken input is just one more factor in the negative column.

HP is in a major repositioning mode and that is likely to focus almost exclusively on the enterprise market. WebOS is in “hibernation” and “consumer” models for PCs and laptops are being removed from marketing plans. That said, I just got this email promotion from HP (obviously sent by a direct mail robot) marketing the TouchPad and accessories. Obviously, it isn’t over til it’s over.

Categories: Articles

Tags: mobile speech, HP, WebOS