How Not To Beat Apple In In-Store Mobile POS
November 3rd, 2011If you want a perfect snapshot of how dominant Apple has become for in-store mobile POS devices—and why—look no further than Hewlett Packard’s mobile POS announcement on Thursday (Nov. 3): a payment-card sled that attaches to HP’s new Slate 2 tablet. This is bound to be a tough sell—remember, HP has just killed off a tablet line in a very public fashion (even though that wasn’t the Windows-based Slate line). The HP tablet-and-sled combo together will be a hefty $1,200. Competing with Apple means HP will need to nail this product perfectly—right?
Yes, that’s what HP needed. But instead of offering the tablet and sled as a general-purpose in-store mobile POS, HP is positioning it largely as an add-on to HP’s own POS systems. OK, that limits the market. So does the lack of a clear advantage over an iPad (HP says being Windows-based will make it “easy for retailers to integrate,” though a product manager acknowledged that iPads probably work fine with most retailers’ systems too). Then there’s the mag-stripe reader, which can work right out of the box in unencrypted mode. Wait, isn’t that exactly what retailers don’t want?
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I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors?
-Christine
