Michael Arlington and the TechCrunch “CrunchPad” have been doing the PR rounds again recently getting everyone all excited about the unveiling of their latest prototypes at the end of July. It goes to show Michael’s influence the tech world these days that people are falling all over themselves to report on, let me say it again, “prototypes” and of course as a shanzhai site copying the world’s media hype we are too. But some detective work on our part reveals you can buy already buy a prototype CrunchPad!
The product presently under the Shen Zhen Great Loong Borther Industrial Co., Ltd. brand name of PC Julong will be sold for between 1900RMB and 2500RMB (depending on volumes)… so that’s volumes of 1 going for approximately US$365.00. Near as I can make out from their site and the article on Shanzhaiben.com the availability is listed as “soon”.
The odd part about the whole thing is the Shanzhaiben.com story and the PC Julong product page is it looks like the image and specs are potentially of the “Prototype B” version of the Crunchpad rather than the final version of the device shown below which is an infinitely more attractive and stylish device… which does seem to sport CrunchPad branding. Although even then the CrunchPad logo looks to have been “Photoshopped” in 2 different places on the device depending on which pic on the TechCrunch article you are looking at. Perhaps TechCrunch are taking their marketing cues from the growing popularity of Shanzhai marketing techniques ;)
So Shen Zhen Great Loong Borther Industrial Co., Ltd. says availability is “soon” and has revealed pricing, while TechCrunch has said:
“The next time we talk about the CrunchPad publicly will be at a special press and user event in July in Silicon Valley. If you’d like to be emailed when new news comes out, send an email to crunchpad@techcrunch.com and we’ll put you on the list.”
While the TechCrunch folks have never said specifically that they would be the final brand or actual seller of the device it looks like
Shen Zhen Great Loong Brother Industrial Co., Ltd. is going to try to be the first to actually sell a version of the device, even before the new Singapore based CrunchPad Inc. folks get their act together.
The product presently under the Shen Zhen Great Loong Borther Industrial Co., Ltd. brand name of P68 Tablet PC will be sold for between 1900RMB and 2500RMB (depending on volumes)… so that’s volumes of 1 going for approximately US$365.00. Near as I can make out from their site and the
article on Shanzhaiben.com the availability is listed as “soon”.
I'll take... er 7 please.
The odd part about the whole thing is
the Shanzhaiben.com story and the P68 Tablet PC product page is it looks like the image and specs are potentially of the
“Prototype B” version of the Crunchpad rather than the latest version of the device shown below which is an infinitely more attractive and stylish device… which also does seem to sport CrunchPad branding. Although even then the CrunchPad logo looks to have been “Photoshopped” in 2 different places on the device depending on which pic on the
TechCrunch article you are looking at. Perhaps TechCrunch are taking their promotional cues from the growing popularity of Shanzhai marketing techniques ;)
Much sleeker, way waaaay nicer looking.
Should dynamic logo movement be listed as a feature? ;)
So Shen Zhen Great Loong Borther Industrial Co., Ltd. says availability is “soon” and has revealed pricing, while
TechCrunch has said:
“The next time we talk about the CrunchPad publicly will be at a special press and user event in July in Silicon Valley. If you’d like to be emailed when new news comes out, send an email to crunchpad@techcrunch.com and we’ll put you on the list.”
Shanzai version comes with a lovely leather (pleather? :) case
What a lovely interface demo pic???
Western Opportunity Analysis:
A western brand buying in quantities of 10,000 would supposedly only get a price of 278.00 US dollars/unit which would be far too high to leave much margins for the channel to get the product to market for less than 500 US dollars. Leveraging the Techcrunch and “Crunchpad” name might help a little but will be challenging if there is a better looking final product from TechCrunch. TechCrunch also likely has software/service partnerships lined up for launch that the P68 Tablet PC won’t have and take ownership of most conversation covering the CrunchPad.
The tablet in its P68 Tablet PC iteration according to the product pages specs is a little confusing as well. They’ve managed to mix in Intel processing specs with VIA graphics technologies. The CrunchPad did in its latest rendition made a change over from the original VIA Nano platform to the Intel Atom one so I suppose that’s where the confusion might be coming from. You can get the full details (especially if your ability to read Traditional Chinese is up to snuff) here.
Proper specs can't be that important can they?
Conclusions:
Regardless of which version of the CrunchPad gets out the door first the P68 Tablet PC Shanzai version will be eclipsed by the better looking, better branded and probably better partnered final version of the CrunchPad.
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