The big issue is that HP didn't learn anything at all from Palm's own Pre launch failure. How on earth did they believe their tablet would do any business, especially released unfinished. Frankly, they should have just not released any product at all if they weren't committed to mobile handsets. Avoiding the retail failures of mobile would have saved them a bundle. They could have spent the time shopping around a license deal or coming up with a better way to monetize those licenses than just asking for up-front or per-unit cash.