We already knew that Fusion Garage was planning to launch new tablets next year, likely running the Google Android operating system. But now e27 reports that the company’s first (and poorly received) tablet has reached the end of life.

Fusion Garage founder Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan says that the Joojoo tablet didn’t meet the company’s sales expectations. He speculates the problem may be that there wasn’t as much demand as anticipated for a tablet designed only to surf the web and run web apps. Of course, it’s also possible that part of the problem was that the Joojoo tablet didn’t really even do those things well… but either way, switching to a Google Android operating system could solve the problem since Fusion Garage won’t have to build the software and user experience from the ground up.

Rathakrishnan apparently refutes reports that Fusion Garage only sold about 90 Joojoo tablets. He tells e27 that while the US launch was pretty much a failure, the tablet did better in Europe and Asia.

via Boy Genius Report

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2 replies on “Bad Joojoo: Fusion Garage pulls plug on the Joojoo tablet, focuses on future”

  1. Oftentimes, it’s difficult to think about something unless you have a
    physical sample of that thing. I’ve learned this some time ago when
    people would tell me that they dind’t know what they wanted, but would know what they didn’t want in a a computer device once they got that device in their hands.

    This may be described as being the “user experience” with computers, or the “driving experience” with cars.

    The trick is that it’s up to the manufacturers to anticipate what
    the user experience might be like, and to constantly measure how
    their device delivers on the user experience all along the development cycle. The previous poster could be right in that the
    JooJoo is a good implementation of a bad idea.

    This makes me ask the question, which is often asked in politics,
    “What were they thinking?”

    For me, tablets aren’t ready for prime time both hardware and
    software wise. And until the pieces come together for a device
    that delivers an adequate user experience, I’m going to sit and
    wait.

    The good news is that over time, the capabilities will increase so
    as to deliver on the user experience part And the price will decrease, an added bonus.

    And that time could be be sooner than I think.

  2. Out of context, this information isn’t anything special. In context, I believe that this makes the entire Joojoo saga the consumer technology story of the year.

    If you remember, this started out as a quasi-community driven effort championed by a delusional, egotistical, error prone blog personality. It’s been the most fascinating example that I’ve seen lately of the old quote: “There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what we want, and the other is getting it.” Just like the modern person has an enormous self-invisible wedge driven in between their attitudes and their behaviors, people no longer seem to meaningful differentiate between what they think they want and what they’ll actually use.

    This project started out as a “wouldn’t it be great if…” hypothetical that actually made the journey into reality. Yes, sometimes implementations are bad or could be better. However, often things turn out exactly as we thought and as good as they could be, and it’s not until we’re able to confront these ideas in reality and experience them as manifestations that we realize that we were wrong. The idea was bad. I don’t think that the Joojoo should be discarded as a bad product. I believe it should be celebrated as a good delivery of a bad idea. It’s also a reminder that we don’t always know what we want, and our wants often make no sense.

    The good news is that if the 12.1 inch slate form factor is appealing to you, there are still some fantastic alternatives. Unfortunately, many of them turn out to be tablets, which many people say they want but don’t seem to actually want.

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