The CrunchPad has been reincarnated as JooJoo. Instead, Fusion Garage (the company that was involved with the CrunchPad design along with TechCrunch) issued a press statement and showed off the new JooJoo device on Monday, December 7, 2009.
In the above video from Cnet, you can see the capacitive touch design and just how thin this thing is. Overall, it looks to be a very promising device if it doesn’t get killed in litigation. However, seeing as how Michael Arrington has yet to produce a contract that Fusion Garage entered into with him, he may not have much of a leg to stand on after all. If there’s really no contract between Arrington and Fusion Garage, this debacle comes across as a big black eye for Arrington’s image and leaves him looking not-so-bright in front of the huge startup following on TechCrunch. Interestingly, both TechCrunch and CrunchGear were silent on Monday after the JooJoo was unveiled.
When asked about Arrington’s involvement with the CrunchPad project, Chandra Rathakrishnan essentially refuted Arrington’s claims of joint ownership of the project and further stated that Arrington failed to deliver on his promises.
The JooJoo will go on sale for pre-orders Friday, December 11, 2009 at an initial price of $499. You can check the home page here.
More reading on the news via the following sources:
