How’s that for a headline? Sad news from the front today, as it appears that HP has quietly pulled the plug on HP Workspace, its app virtualization solution for the Elite x3.
The one that allowed the handset to basically stream those classic traditional desktop programs.
Win32 software, as it is called.
While the company recently made it clear that it would continue to sell the Elite x3 Windows 10 Mobile handset through 2019, the business-focused handset has lost a part of its appeal and is no longer as versatile as it was before.
That’s because HP has, without a note or a hint, has discontinued HP Workspace, its software virtualization platform that allowed users to run select Windows programs in Continuum mode.
This is what it looked like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAjQpM8PpVA
The company explained in a statement that HP Workspace can actually be replaced by other solutions from VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft. You can read the full statement below:
“Thank you for your interest in HP Workspace! As of July 31, 2017, HP has discontinued the HP Workspace product. When the HP Elite x3 was introduced, there were limited options to deliver Windows PC applications to Windows 10 mobile devices. So, we created HP Workspace to enable HP Elite x3 users’ access to Windows “desktop” applications. Since then, leading providers such as VMWare®, Microsoft and Citrix® have released or improved their solutions for this operating system. Please visit their respective websites for more information on their solutions.”
Oh well.
All things considered, the product, as innovative as it was, had a rather limited appeal to begin with.
It was only available as a subscription service, with the basic tier priced at $49 per month per user, and the virtualized environment limited to 4GB of RAM, and 40 hours of monthly usage for just 10 different Win32 applications.
Not to mention, the need of a good, stable and reliable, Internet connection, meaning it was useless while offline.
HP Workspace was a standout feature of the Elite x3. And with it being gone now, business users have one less reason to be interested in the handset. It still is a fairly powerful, neatly designed flagship mobile device.
But only one in a sea of other fairly powerful, neatly designed flagship mobile devices.
The going gets tough!
