if hp could have released android app support like in the playbook, then improved the tablet a bit, eg not jumping directly to the ipad style price tag
and also added a rear facing camera, along with usb host and a micro sd card slot, then it would have been successful. The hp touchpad tablet is overall better than the ipad 2 in terms of features (better speakers (probably the best speakers of any tablet currently on the market), faster CPU when overclocked (overclocks to 1.83GHz for both cores), 1GB RAM)
while the tablet is great, HP should have never tried to price it similarly to the ipad (no one will buy a product in it's first entry into the market when a well established and supported device can be had for the same price)
now that the os is open source, it stands a good chance at becoming widely adopted. Remember, a ui can make or break an os. (just look at linux compared to windows and understand that PC gamers are a minority. Linux wins out on just about everything except the UI. Microsoft has done well to provide a UI that is simple and command like free for about 99.9% of things that a user would want to do, while also allowing for more advanced things if the user desires.
on linux the average user will eventually come across the limitations of the app and end up frustrated over the stupid stupid tar.gz files, or end up with non intuitive commands when a tar.gz app fails because the user did not run the other 10 commands to install dependencies
all in all, the user experience is one of the most important aspects of an OS