Hasta La Gadget!

CrunchPad, the touchscreen tablet that was declared dead a week ago by its impresario inventor Michael Arrington, is back. A Singapore-based company, Fusion Garage, announced plans to introduce the device under a new name: JooJoo.

JooJoo will have a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, 4 GB solid state drive, an accelerometer that will allow it to switch between landscape and portrait modes, Wi-Fi connectivity and a battery life of up to five hours. It will run a custom-designed operating system that will allow the machine to boot in nine seconds and access the internet near-instantaneously.

But instead of the initial price point of $200, JooJoo will now cost $500.

“It’s a product whose death has been greatly exaggerated,” says Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, CEO and founder of Fusion Garage, which until last week was working with Arrington to design the device. Rathakrishnan showed the device, seen above, in a web conference Monday, and will be following that up with hands-up demos to the press later in the day. (The green hue of the screen is caused by the video camera used, Rathakrishnan claimed.)

Fusion Garage will start taking pre-orders for the device December 11th, and will deliver it in 8-10 weeks, says Rathakrishnan.

The launch of JooJoo is yet another twist in the strange tale of a tablet device that first surfaced last year. Arrington floated the idea of a tablet in June 2008 when he talked of a touchscreen device that would run Firefox and Skype on top of a Linux kernel. The tablet would have low-end hardware — a power button, a headphone jack, speakers, a microphone and a built-in camera for video. It would come with Wi-Fi, 512 MB of memory, a 4-GB solid-state hard drive and no keyboard. All this for $200.

The idea seemed promising, especially because other major PC makers including Apple and Dell are reportedly working on tablets due for launch next year. The notion of a tablet capable of showing large, interactive text and graphics has excited magazine publishers, including Wired’s corporate parent Condé Nast, which is among several companies planning tablet-based magazine apps. Time Inc. also recently showed a slick tablet concept video for Sports Illustrated.

But after repeated delays, Arrington declared the CrunchPad project dead last week. Arrington accused Fusion Garage of cutting him out of the deal. Based on pressure from shareholders, Fusion Garage had decided to move forward and sell the device directly without TechCrunch’s involvement, said Arrington, who has said he will pursue legal action against Fusion Garage.

Rathakrishnan says his company cut Arrington out because Fusion Garage “designed, funded and developed the product,” with Arrington failing to deliver on any of his promises.

“There are dreamers and there are doers,” he says. “Fusion Garage is the only actual doer in this story.”

Rathakrishnan says he reached out to Arrington in 2008 after he read the latter’s post about the need for an inexpensive web tablet. Arrington, in turn, offered to introduce Fusion Garage to hardware designers, and investors, he says. Ultimately, TechCrunch wanted to acquire Fusion Garage.

“But nothing tangible came out of it,” claims Rathakrishnan. “Michael was unable to deliver.”

“There’s talk and then there’s action,” he says. “We completed development of our OS, hired the expertise to make key hardware design decisions, develop the platform and a new finished prototype. And we secured our own funding.”

That’s why Fusion Garage owns the IP to the product and can introduce it without having Arrington or CrunchPad associated with it, says Rathakrishnan.

Meanwhile, Arringon has threatened to file a lawsuit against Fusion Garage. But so far, no case has been filed. Rathakrishan claims no contracts were ever signed between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch around the CrunchPad.

When Arrington first talked about the project, critics pointed out that its projects $200 pricetag and aggressive timeline were unrealistic, given the ambitious features Arrington had planned. Production costs and a challenging retail environment would eat into profit margins, they said.

And they were right, says Rathakrishnan.

“There are dreams and there are hallucinations,” he says. “Arrington’s dreams of $200-$300 are as real as his claims of IP ownership. Nothing worthwhile can be delivered at that price.”

So far Fusion Garage has raised $3 million in funding and is set to announce an additional round of investment shortly, says Rathakrishnan.

As for marketing muscle that TechCrunch or Arrington could have provided, Rathakrishnan says its something that Fusion Garage won’t really miss.

“Writing blog posts is not marketing,” he says. “If marketing was only about talk, we would have seen a successful tablet years ago. Microsoft has been talking about tablets for years. TechCrunch’s marketing capability is defined to a blog.”

Arrington did not reply to a request for comment.

See Also:

• CrunchPad Tablet Dies Stillborn
• Calling CrunchPad: Is Anybody Home?
• CrunchPad Nears Production, Looks Awesome
• Web 2.0 Mogul Michael Arrington Creates New Web Tablet
  

Photo: Screenshot of the JooJoo tablet