Revisiting the Zeen Rumors

Maybe we should be taking all the rumors about the HP eStation Zeen with a grain of salt. The majority of the meat about the Zeen that was reported by Engadget came from anonymous tipsters. Now, we’re not saying that we don’t trust Engagdet, but it stands to reason that some of it may be old (or wrong) information.

HP has already publicly established links with Barnes and Noble. It’s pretty safe to say the rumor of the Zeen having significant integration with the Barnes and Noble e-bookstore is true. No big surprise there.

Like we mentioned before, the Zeen may have been the Android tablet that was put on an indefinite hold. Also according to Engadget’s sources, the Zeen will not be shifted to webOS. TabletPC Review has an interesting take on this, that we happen to think may be the case.

…it seems more dubious that the Zeen will really run Android, rather than the WebOS obtained through HP’s Palm acquisition.

As we reported on before, HP’s Todd Bradley has said that Android was not on their roadmap. Why keep pushing the point that you are interested in controlling the eco-system of a device, if you are going to release a device that has an OS you have no real control over? Outgoing HP CEO, Mark Hurd, made this statement back in May:

We prefer to have [the] OS in our case be our IP, where we can control the customer experience as we always have in the printing business, and that’s a big deal to us.

TabletPC Review brings up another interesting point. Since the HP/Palm integration is still in the early stages, what if this Zeen is only the first?

If the eStation Zeen is really going to run Android, could it be that HP is eyeing not just one Zeen, but a larger series of gadgets, with future Zeens running WebOS instead?

More and more interesting stuff. Since there has been no official announcement of the Zeen by HP, all of this is rumors and “tips” from anonymous sources. Will the Zeen actually run Android? Will it be delayed so that it can be re-worked to run webOS instead? Will the Zeen actually hit the market? For now, it’s best to just wait and see.

[Source: TabletPC Review]