“It appears that the wild story of Fusion Garage has come to a sadly ignominious close: the manufacturer of the failed JooJoo and Grid10 tablets has all but disappeared, leaving behind only a database error on its website and a US PR firm that is quitting representation,” Nilay Patel reports for The Verge.
“That leaves what few Fusion Garage customers there were in the lurch: some Grid10 buyers have been waiting five weeks for a promised October 1 delivery that seemingly won’t ever happen now, and the company’s promise of a free Grid10 for every JooJoo owner seems to be so much fantasy now as well,” Patel reports. “It’s probably just as well; the Grid10 was a terrible product when we reviewed it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: That TechCrunch tablet thing (CrunchPad) is just plain weird (unless it’s a publicity stunt, in which case it’s genius). If it’s real, the weirdness lies not the actual tablet so much (which, last we heard, sounds too heavy, among other things, to fly), but the maker(s). We’re not sure the comfort level is there for prospective buyers. We’d launch our own tablet, but, alas, we’re cursed with too much sense. – MacDailyNews Take, August 18, 2009
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Judge Bork” and “GetMeOnTop” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
iPad, killer: Court docs show only 90 JooJoo tablet pre-orders (with 15 returned) – March 31, 2010
Dan Frommer: Playing with JooJoo tablet just makes me want an Apple tablet – December 11, 2009
So-called CrunchPad tablet project goes kaput – November 30, 2009
Coudn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of folks.
Was in India early 2010 and witnessed a hilarious tv spot trying to raise awareness about homegrown products and especially tech solutions. The anti Apple stuff was hilarious. ‘Apple don’t offer a Warrenty in India’. ‘The iPad can’t do the internet in India’. ‘The App Store will never come to India’. ‘Apple blackmails you into using the AppStore’ etc etc. Fusion Garage were also offering discounts for anybody paying up front.
I guess the next we will hear about Fusion Garage is that an enquiry has started into where these funds went and that the missing Mr Chandra Rathakrishnan is being urgently sought to answer questions.
I wonder what Popular Mechanics has to say about this?
Fusion Garbage was not an Indian company. It was a Singapore based Asian company. They never sold more than 90 tablets and I believe they tried selling them in US first.
No juju for the JooJoo.
So, to the Fusion Garage, they added a letter ‘b’ in there somewhere?
Look at Fusion, RIMM, Dell, HP and others and then see what impact this is having on the end users who bought this crap!
Now all these millions of people world wide are PO’d. They thought they would have a great product at a low price and instead they got sucker punched in both money and time and reduced output.
These consumers could have spent a few hundred more and been productive from day one on an iPad and now they will likely have to buy an iPad to be productive with a pad/tablet.
Those consumers are probably going to tell their friends and this is the type of 2nd hand recommendation that does Apple very well.
It is a lesson the cheapskate manufacturers haven’t learned. Bad word of mouth will be extremely difficult for the likes of HP to overcome, if even possible at all.
I very tiny drop of blood…