[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] BarryH_GEG:
I've run product marketing/management in many of my positions. To a large extent, what you covered in your missive is true. Launching a new product successfully is a study in project management. There are thousands of tasks that all have to be orchestrated and there are many dependencies and there are some things can only be done sequentially. There's an axiom in product management: you can have it good, fast, or cheap - pick two. My guess is the CEO of Asus who is somewhat of a cowboy demanded "fast" to beat other competitors to market. That pretty much screws the product management team who is forced to make concessions with their carefully created project plan/timeline and forego the quality of the launch for the sake of speed.

There are quite a few clues that something funky is going on with the launch of the Prime.

1) Clearly the types and quantities of product are lower than originally estimated. The fact that some colors/sizes are available in some places and not others is a clue. And the launch date sliding by weeks very close in means they allowed themselves no cushion to deal with issues that inevitably come up with a product launch. That or they miscalculated which is never a good sign. Amazon, who is really good at selling stuff, didn't randomly take pre-orders without some sort of quantity commitment. Something changed and fairly close to launch. The fact that they pulled the product completely probably means they lost confidence in Asus' commitments; at least for the time being.

2) Until the device is in fairly widespread use we won't know if there are potential h/w or s/w issues. The fact than some reviewer units and early units in Taiwan are having Wi-Fi issues may be early production challenges or a potential design issue. The fact that reviewers with problem units sent them back and got units without issues is both good and bad. The fact Asus knew what the problem was and fixed it means that, at a stage very close to launch, they're finding things that are typically identified much earlier in the process.

3) Asus is smaller compared to its peers. Based on last quarter's financials they generate half the revenue of Acer another Taiwanese tech company. The combination of fewer resources, a demanding CEO, set-in-stone deadlines and working with new technology (Teg3 and ICS) isn't a recipe for quality and timeliness. And being smaller, they get less preferential treatment and pricing from vendors supplying the components they use to assemble their products. And the TF1 wasn't a beacon of quality at launch and the Prime is a much more complex device.

4) There's been a lot of discussion about the complexity of fabricating the Teg3 SoC. Other things like the all metal casing are new too. There may be production or supply issues with components being manufactured by third parties for the Prime that are beyond Asus' control. Regardless, you don't typically set a launch date until all those risks are identified and mitigated.

So, the statement that all product launches are challenging is true - in every industry. Asus said they plan to sell a million tablets in 2012 of which I'm assuming the Prime is the majority. The launch will be quickly forgotten. How well Asus did with the Prime will be judged months from now.