The Crunchpad Might be approaching End of life

Bad News - The Crunchpad might never make its way to our home

Users will never be able to see the Crunchpad again

It was really shocking when I first came across the post which read as "The Crunchpad disappears". I mean we all were eagerly waiting for this device to launch on November 17th but it never showed up and now I guess users will never be able to get their hands on this device. Initially I thought that there might be some more delay because of some technical issues but when I read the post which was made by Michael Arrington (CEO of TechCrunch, the man behind the idea of the Crunchpad), I was literally shocked. After about a year and a half of hard work and millions of dollars spent on R&D the Crunchpad project had finally come to a bitter end.

TechCrunch had teamed up with Fusion Garage to develop and launch the Crunchpad, but, on November 17th, just a few days before the official launch of the Crunchpad (it was slated for a November 20th launch at the Real-Time Crunchup event), Michael Arrington received an e-mail from Chandra Rathakrishnan (CEO of Fusion Garage) which dashed the hopes of the team at TechCrunch and many more people who were eagerly waiting to get their hands on the Crunchpad. The mail sent to Micheal made it clear that the shareholders at Fusion Garage had bigger plans, they wanted to scrap the deal made with TechCrunch and instead they intended to sell the device directly through Fusion Garage. Well, considering the popularity that tablet PC's have gained and especially the attention that Crunchpad had managed to grab, it seems as Fusion Garage had made a move in the right direction but at the cost of their partner. Now, TechCrunch plans to file a series of class action lawsuits against Fusion Garage and rightfully so since TechCrunch and Fusion Garage jointly own the IPR (intellectual property rights) of the product whereas TechCrunch solely owns the IPR for the name 'Crunchpad'. Therefore, it is legally impossible for Fusion Garage to sell the device on their own without prior consent or without a prior agreement with TechCrunch.

Both the companies had shared significant development expenditures and the teams had spent quite a lot of time in Singapore, Taiwan, and the US to develop working prototypes of the Crunchpad. Not only this, the Crunchpad project had received quite a lot of support from other companies and people all around the world. As Micheal Arrington states that a major multi-billion dollar retailer was offering advice on manufacturing partners and was also offering to sell the Crunchpad at zero margin in the initial days of the launch. The retailer was also willing to pay for the devices on order instead of 30 days after delivery as the norm is. The retailer was even willing to ship the product from China on their own planes which would have helped cut shipping costs. Not only this, even Intel had offered its Atom CPU's at a very low price and was also offering engineering support to build the device. Capital was also not a problem as many blue-chip companies and venture capitalists were more than willing to invest in the company.

All said and done, It is really a sad story that the Crunchpad can not make it to our homes. I would have loved to play with my Crunchpad but I guess I will have to just forget it now and wait for the Apple Tablet to make an appearance on the shelves.