JooJoo Tablet Dies, Fusion Garage Continues On

vanstinator writes "Due to heavy competition from the iPad and a less-than-stellar entrance into the market, Fusion Garage today released a statement saying that the JooJoo tablet is no more." Company founder Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan says that the company will move forward, but hasn't provided much information about future products. According to Geek.com, "The JooJoo has had a short life and will be remembered more for the fighting it caused between Fusion and Michael Arrington than anything else. It started life as the CrunchPad and a collaboration between Arrington and Fusion Garage. Then Fusion cut Arrington out of the picture, the name was changed to JooJoo and the price increased from $200 to $500."

Where's the post mortem on this.

[falldeaf]

Googling doesn't really turn up any behind the scenes account of this story. What really happened? Somehow, Arrington's version of the story smells a lot like half-truths. If there are any insiders reading the /. comments, there's no need to wait for VH1 to come out with a crappy new show about the background behind failed business ventures, where comedians past the peak of their career work furiously to humorize angry chat logs and second rate re-enactments, go ahead and blab it all anonymously here... Oh, also, if VH1 is reading and you like that idea; just remember where it came from. We'll call it 'behind the silicon valley business deals', then we'll send me a royalty check.

Re:Kin-like

[donnyspi]

Our company was one of those preorders. We were testing our product on lots of different tablets. We received the JooJoo, saw what a piece of garbage it was, and returned it for a full refund.

Re:Hmm

[hey!]

Not really. Joo Joo was a major innovation in spectacular Apple competitor fiascoes.

This wasn't a case of somebody showing up with a crappy styrofoam boogie board long after the wave had passed. This was management realizing they had their crappy styrofoam board in about the right place in time to catch the wave, then drowning as they experienced a giant greed orgasm.

Someone should tell...

[CannonballHead]

them. [thejoojoo.com]

Lesson Learned

[vanstinator]

The problem I always saw with the JooJoo was how Fusion Garage rushed it to market whilst in the middle of a complex lawsuit and the looming launch of the iPad. All the pieces could not have fallen together worse, yet they still pushed the launch. After the launch it was hardly better, the interface was buggy, laggy, and slow. It was lacking features, and was paled in comparison to the iPad. I can't help wonder what would have happened if they had taken more care in the product itself than worrying about who owned what.

Re:I'm a simple guy...

[peragrin]

yep it requires businessmen to think outside the box and think differently.

That's why it took MSFT two months to figure out how to use a menu with xbox's Kinect.

It is why MSFT even though they have produced a tablet OS since at least 2002, only ever produced ONE application that took complete advantage of said features.

It is also why Apple is so secretive about their stuff. Do you know how many ipad failures where tested over the last 8 years?

Re:Where's the post mortem on this.

[falldeaf]

This is about as much as I knew of the story, I'd read Arrington's devastated, public announcement (which seemed fishy to me) and tomshardware.com's covering of the story. I also remember lady ada being interested in the story and being dissapointed by the news, along with some insight from a hardware manufacturers perspective about why it may have failed. But I'm really curious about the conflict between Arrington and the fusion garage folks. What actually happened there?! I think I'll just make peace with the idea that I'll never know.... riiiiight now! Moving on.