No more free Touchnote postcards, paid option not forthcoming 23

When Touchnote released their webOS app last April to send postcards right from their webOS phone, HP announced that it would be paying for the first 50,000 postcards sent with the app. Instead of the normal $1.49 charge from the equivalent iOS, Android or Windows Phone apps or the Touchnote website, webOS users could easily upload their own images, add some text and address the postcards for free! Unfortunately, if you have tried to send a postcard over the last few weeks, you have been presented with the message above: "Bad News. No more free postcards. Palm paid for 50,000 and they have all been sent."

As one of those users who put a nice dent in that 50,000, to say that this was disappointing would be an understatement. It appeared as if we would have to start paying for our postcards like everyone else, right? Well, there was one really big problem, in that there was no place to enter any payment information into the app. And to our dismay, there is no plan to add that ability in the future.

In correspondences with Oded Ran, CEO of Touchnote (continue after the break for the entire letter), he made it clear that "as a small business, we only have limited bandwidth with regards to the number of platforms we can support fully" nd that they would be focusing solely on iOS and Android. There won't be a pay option added to the webOS app either, as Ran noted that it "would require a reinvestment of money and resource - something that we are currently unable to justify at the moment".

As the final nail of the coffin, the decision by HP to no longer release webOS hardware made the decision all that much easier for Touchnote. In a followup email, Oded added that once they "were informed that HP would no longer be releasing phones using webOS...we had to make a long-term decision about where to invest, and it simply didn't make sense to do so on a platform with a limited lifespan."

Yet another direct casualty of Leo and the Board's decision to cancel webOS hardware and the current uncertain future of webOS.

Unfortunately, as a small business, we only have limited bandwidth with regards to the number of platforms we can support fully. We don't want to "half-support" something - in our opinion, unless you do something properly, it is not worth doing.

At the moment, due primarily to the penetration of Apple's IOS and the Android platform, we have been forced to concentrate solely on these 2 mobile platforms. We have essentially had to mothball our Symbian, WindowsPhone7 and HP/Palm apps for the short-term, so we can best support IOS and Android. This decision is something that we are continuously revisiting each month - the mobile landscape changes almost on a daily basis.

With regards to HP/Palm in particular, we had an agreement with HP to build and support a WebOS app for the past 6 months. However, in order for us to integrate payment into the app (and therefore continue to support it without giving away the cards for free - something that we have done for the past 6 months) would require a reinvestment of money and resource - something that we are currently unable to justify at the moment. However, as I mentioned above, this is something that we are continuously revisiting.

I hope you appreciate our position - I would love to be able to continue to support all of our customers on all of the platforms we have built for.

I hope that makes sense. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Oded Ran, CEO, Touchnote