OQO Facing Cash Crisis, Might Shut Down

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/04/16/oqo-may-be-shutting-down/' target='_blank'>http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/0...-shutting-down/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"OQO will be shutting its doors before shipping the OQO Model 2+ according to industry sources. Bob Rosin, OQO's SVP of sales and marketing, told the Wall Street Journal that the company is facing a cash crunch, has reduced work hours and is actively looking for a buyer. We're fans of OQO and really hope the situation improves, but things are looking grim. Apparently the company is virtually out of cash and the company will not say when the Model 2+ will ship. There's an estimated ship date of May 2009 listed on the Model 2+ product page, but the WSJ article points out that the target will most likely be missed."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1239912172.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>The OQO has always been an interesting, if expensive, device. Their innovation in the hardware was impressive, but their devices always seemed to struggle to find a place in the market. I've heard the very smart <a href="http://gartenblog.net/" target="_blank">Michael Gartenberg</a> say that there's a market for 50,000 of anything and I feel like that's exactly the market that <a href="http://www.oqo.com/" target="_blank">OQO</a> was limited to. For some people, this is a dream device - the problem is, there's not enough of those people to keep a company like OQO going. The OQO 2+ is an impressive device - the 5-inch OLED screen is, simply put, stunning. The $999 price point isn't outrageous - but ask yourself how well Windows XP or Windows Vista works at 480 x 800 screen resolution. The answer is "not very".</p>

[Felix Torres]

I would suggest that the issue isn't resolution as much as form factor; the iPhone and iPod touch both live off even lower resolution displays but they make do because the software and hardware complement each other.
OQO, on the other hand, did wonderful things on the hardware side but did nothing on the software size to balance out usability.

Thanks to netbooks and UMPCs, we now know pretty conclusively that a 6"x9" form factor is the smallest practical PC size. And if the upcoming ASUS T91 lives up to its advanced billing, we'll have a TabletPC not much bigger than the OQO at half the price.

Not looking good for OQO.
(Or Samsung's UMPC, either.)

[mobilesales]

The basic flaw is to believe that people would want to do the kinds of work they do with a full laptop using your thumbs? That basic assumption is what has doomed OOQ since they started years ago. Updating anything in the computer without addressing that basic key assumption which is wrong will never create any demand.

People would be willing to sacrafice and use a smaller screen, not have all of the frills of large laptop, but even anticipating a tighter position with your two hands to type, people would never want to use a two fingered approach to performing PC work. They should have used a traditional handhelds clamshell design.

Those handhelds back in the 1990's were the perfect size to carry and use. Their only flaw was nobody at that time could fit a full PC into that small cavity. Now technology can enable that but so far all of the computer companies have forgotton about the basic way we want to use a computer.

[Jason Dunn]

OQO, on the other hand, did wonderful things on the hardware side but did nothing on the software size to balance out usability.

Yeah, that was my point - I made it quite poorly though in my currently sick state. Putting 1024 x 600 on a 5 inch screen would be worthless with XP/Vista. So it's not a matter of cranking up the resolution, it's a matter of the software being a poor fit for the screen size AND resolution. Maybe if you had a UI designed to overlay on top of Vista/XP...Microsoft had that UMPC shell a while back, I haven't seen/heard anything about it in a long time. That's really what you need to make a device like the OQO work.

[Hooch Tan]

Yeah, that was my point - I made it quite poorly though in my currently sick state. Putting 1024 x 600 on a 5 inch screen would be worthless with XP/Vista. So it's not a matter of cranking up the resolution, it's a matter of the software being a poor fit for the screen size AND resolution. Maybe if you had a UI designed to overlay on top of Vista/XP...Microsoft had that UMPC shell a while back, I haven't seen/heard anything about it in a long time. That's really what you need to make a device like the OQO work.

OQO should've taken a lesson from Microsoft's Windows Mobile team. Originally WinCE had an interface very similar to WinXP and quickly found out that it really doesn't work for a screen size that small. I have to agree with Felix wholeheartedly that OQO didn't work that much on the software side.

I also think they promoted it wrong, making it out to be a UMPC only. It had a nice docking station, so when one comes home, it could dock to a large screen and better keyboard. In that respect, it's more of a PC you can take away without carrying around a hefty bag. But now with netbooks and iPhones, any niche they've carved out is bound to be really slim pickings.