The future of the Crunchpad tablet designed by Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch was uncertain for a while until news about the device was brought up during a podcast called The Gillmor Gang. During the podcast Arrington said that the price is $300-$400 and that the Crunchpad is “streamrolling around.” He also mentioned that there is opportunity for “soft revenue” and “sponsorships.” The reason why there has not been much news about the availability of the device is because Arrington is working on making sure that the tablet is “perfect.”
As many of you know by now, our friendly rivals at TechCrunch are building a new electronic tablet called the Crunchpad, slated to be released by this November. Apparently Best Buy Chief Marketing Officer Barry Judge got a chance to play around with the prototype.
Judge tweeted “Just met chief blogger at Tech Crunch. Talked about the Crunchpad and saw a prototype. Great looking device, think it will be a real hit.” This just tells me a couple of things. The Crunchpad may actually have a chance against a rumored upcoming Apple tablet computer. And this also tells me that Best Buy seems to be a bigger fan of TechCrunch than he is with Gizmodo.
An hour before Judge tweeted meeting Arrington, he tweeted that he met YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to discuss ways to better leverage the video website. He also asked his followers for ideas on what other retailers do to use YouTube well. Here’s my two word answer for Judge: viral videos. The Improv Everywhere group hit over one million views in their viral video of sending a bunch of blue shirt, khaki wearing agents into a Best Buy store.
Crunchpad is an uncoming tablet device that was rolled out of a project by technology blog TechCrunch.com. It turns out that the details of his project have been leaked by the Straits Times in Singapore. Arrington was not very happy about the leak as he wrote the following message on Twitter:
re crunchpad, obviously i’m completely rips**t mad about all this unauthorized bs press: http://bit.ly/2dVjBQ wtf.
The news story by the Straits Times reports that the Crunchpad will be available starting this November, but Arrington denies it and calls the Strait Times b.s. I think that the news story sounds credible because the paper actually met with Fusion Garage, the company behind the Crunchpad production.
The device is expected to retail for $400. Some of the features include WiFi, 3G access (meaning TechCrunch needs to sign a telecomm deal), custom OS based on Webkit, and one USB port. The applications on the tablet will be web-based. Rumor has it that the measurements are 13×8 inches and weight is 2.6 lbs.
Michael Arrington launched the TechCrunch network about four years ago and now it generates about $6 million in revenue as of last year from advertising, events, and other sources. This year the company expects to bring in more than that.
Now Arrington is turning his focus into the hardware sector. He is working on a new device called the CrunchPad and has registered a company called CrunchPad Inc. The CrunchPad is a touch-screen tablet made for surfing the web and using video chat.
Angel Investor Ron Conway said that Arrington “understands the inner workings of Silicon Valley, and because he’s been around the valley so long, people trust him and trust his judgment.” Conway himself is considering to invest in CrunchPad.
