In the past few days, as the entire world seemed to be commenting on the new Apple iPad, one 13-person group from Singapore was missing. It would have been a very interesting set of comments, because that group is the same one behind the JooJoo/CrunchPad, a tablet conceived by Mike Arrington and built by Fusion Garage that’s currently in a set of serious litigation woes.
If you remember correctly, after the two groups had their split up, Fusion Garage vowed to sell the tablet by themselves, subsequently re-naming it the JooJoo. Pre-orders were taken in December and promised within 8-10 weeks. Ever since the iPad’s release, numerous technology blogs (minus TechCrunch possibly) tried to reach out to Fusion Garage and get a statement. One, VentureBeat, finally succeeded in getting an interview with Chandra Rathakrishnan, the CEO of FusionGarage. Interesting tidbits below:
- - When asked about how many pre-orders they got, Chandra refused to release numbers, which is fine. I, along with many others, have a feeling it’s not much, even if it apparently “exceeded [FusionGarage's] expectations”
- - The article’s title seems a bit deceptive. Or perhaps I missed something. The title, “JooJoo CEO pledges to ship this month, claims deal with leading phone maker”, really seemed to suggest they were in talks with a major phone maker for some 3G connection. In the interview, however, all Chandra does is “not rule out” the possibility of 3G.
- - On having an App Store, Chandra strongly said No, citing his belief that with the Internet, no one needs Apps. Moreover, he also suggested that iPhone Apps are merely copies of what’s available online. I will not criticize that, because honestly I wouldn’t know where to start. But, it sure does sound like a cop-out to me especially with the amount of success behind the iPhone that can be directly attributed to the 140,000+ applications available on the device.
If the JooJoo did offer an App Store clone anyways, would developers really jump on? Probably not. So, even though this is a clear cop-out, even if he had major plans for an JooJoo Apps, it’s highly unlikely he could get that off the ground. I suppose it’s easier to just bash the iPhone App Store and claim the Internet as your savior.
- - Lastly, when asked about perhaps the most interesting question – what differentiates the JooJoo from the iPad or why the JooJoo is better – Chandra cited two things: bigger size and flash.
Two things. First, it’s tough seeing an educated critic asking for an unstable, albeit very popular, web application known for causing a horrendous amount of system crashes. I still don’t understand why no Flash on the iPhone is a problem. Adobe has to wake up and fix things; otherwise, HTML5 will very soon replace it. Good riddance. Now, regarding the bigger size. Besides the fact that it seems very immature to use ‘bigger size’ as your top feature, it’s also interesting to me just how dismal it makes their situation look. “What’s your top feature over the iPad?” “Well, we’re, like, an inch bigger.”
JooJoo is an interesting product and it’s definitely one I would love to get my hands on, at least for a quick demo. It’s just a really sad situation now. A company embroidered in a nasty and strong litigation problem over ownership, coupled with the fact that their device sells at the exact same price as the iPad while offering nothing more than a crashing web-plugin and an extra inch, is trying to take on Apple’s latest creation. How sad.