The clouds continue to roll in. While questions still swirl as to how Apple and Google will respond to Amazon‘s recently launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services, details are starting to emerge about other competitors’ plans in the remote user storage arena. Today brings word that Hewlett-Packard will be using cloud servers for music storage when its webOS-powered HP TouchPad tablet arrives this summer.
The news comes from a Powerpoint presentation being sent around to HP Small & Medium Business customers previewing what’s coming up, PreCentral reports. The slideshow reveals plans for an HP Movie Store and an HP Music Store. The notes for the latter mention built-in music syncing using cloud servers to remotely store content.
It is hardly surprising at this point to hear that a tech company is embracing the cloud, but HP will offer a few features that trump what Amazon’s recently launched initiative is capable of so far. The TouchPad will use a “smart-caching” to locally store the music that the user is most likely to listen to. There will also be the option of streaming music that isn’t actually owned. The service will apparently extend to HP smartphones as well at some point, likely after they’ve all been updated to webOS 3.0 alongside the TouchPad.
As of now, Apple continues to maintain a stranglehold on the tablet space with its (deservedly) popular iPad. Cloud syncing won’t make or break the success of the TouchPad, but if recent reports of a $499 price tag and June launch are true, it will certainly arrive priced to compete, and with features and hardware specifications that trump the Apple device on several fronts.
