Is the CrunchPad dead or just mortally wounded?
Is the CrunchPad, that low-cost Web tablet for the masses conceived by TechCrunch, dead in the water, destined to be vaporware always threatening to make an appearance but never making it out of development? Or is mortally wounded, crippled by rising hardware costs? Or are we just being overly melodramatic and not trusting that Michael Arrington has everything in hand?
The CrunchPad should conceivably have been released by now. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, who has made it his mission to get this product from being an idea, onto the drawing board, into production, and then finally released, suggested as much back in June. And yet there is no sign of the device and there’s been nothing official written or said about it for five months now.
I’ve been following the development of the CrunchPad since it was first mooted as an idea back in July 2008. At the time, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington proposed an ultra-cheap touchscreen Web tablet that would retail for around $200 rather than the $2,000 being asked for the top-end products.
By January we had our first sighting of a prototype but the price had increased to around $300. April saw another prototype hit the site and then June brought official confirmation that the design of the product was nearly complete. The video of the close-to-finished product even excited the pessimistic me.
But then nothing. For five long, barren months. This being despite Arrington promising an event “at the end of July or the beginning of August to make a big announcement about the CrunchPad.” This was followed by a promise of the product being on sale “as soon as possible.”
Silicon Alley Insider is now asking whether it could all be over for the CrunchPad. Its sources suggest the device has been delayed indefinitely by increasing expenses, with suppliers coming back to Arrington with higher quotes for parts than originally expected.
Seeing as the proposed price point has already been upped, this could certainly be enough to kill the project off. Especially when Apple is preparing to release a tablet computer expected to retail at under $1,000. If the CrunchPad is going to cost anywhere near that amount of money then it may as well concede defeat right now.
Dan Frommer makes another guess (with tongue probably very firmly in cheek) that Arrington is waiting until Google releases its Chrome OS before launching with it as an integral part of the CrunchPad.
Related Posts:
November 5th, 2009
Why not? Even at $500 (half the anticipated iPad price), with Chrome OS the thing could be awesome and sell well. It won’t have a chance at Apple-like numbers but it can be comfortable at #2.