Remember the Joojoo?

The Crunchpad?

That much-hyped $500 tablet computer that’s not the Apple iPad?

No?

Despite generating a lot of buzz with tech bloggers, Joojoo creators Fusion Garage appears to have had difficulty translating that into orders.

Gizmodo reports that there were 90 pre-orders for the JooJoo, and 15 of those were returned. Preorders for the iPad are estimated at 250,000-300,000 units, about 3,500 times as many.

If you’ve been hoping for a touchscreen Internet tablet, it looks like you’re going to have to keep waiting.

TechCrunch today announced that they were sending their much-hyped CrunchPad design to the deadpool.

According to TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington:

The CEO of our partner on the project, Chandra Rathakrishnan, sent me an email with the subject “no good news.”

Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project.

Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.

Except that Apple wouldn’t wait to the day a product was to be launched to hammer out their legal agreements. And if Apple had problems with a supplier, it would find a new one.

Did Anyone Want A $600 CrunchPad Tablet?

While TechCrunch says they’re deadpooling the CrunchPad over partner/supplier problems, you have to wonder if there would be any market for it, if they could get it built.

TechCrunch puts their costs at “300ish”. Realistically, the CrunchPad would have had to have sold for $500-600 for it to be viable.

The CrunchPad had very limited capabilities, though – much more limited than already-available netbooks. It’s hard to imagine the target market for a device like this – tech geeks – paying that much of a premium to get so much less.

There’s a real need for a portable touchscreen tablet computer that offers more capabilities that the Kindle and other ereaders. There’s a need for a touchscreen tablet that’s designed with the future in mind – the Internet, rather than the past – books.

Someone will find that sweet spot in the near future – but it’s not coming in the form of a CrunchPad and it’s not going to be cheap.

Update: Fake Steve Jobs offers his take on the announcement, Arrington boned by this extremely handsome man-weasel:

Little bit of advice for you, Mike. You say you’re confused because the folks at Fusion Garage won’t return your calls and email? And now, you’re just mostly feeling all sad about the whole thing? Bitch, please. Get some guys, get in your fucking cars, and drive over there and beat some asses with baseball bats. Do you not understand this? And please don’t tell me you don’t have the stomach for physical violence, because if that’s the case, what the hell were you doing trying to get into the hardware business in the first place?

This isn’t blogging, where you pussies have your little bitch fights over someone reprinting your stuff and not giving you enough credit for the scoop. You’re not having a little Twitter fight with Kara Swisher. Good God, man, This is hardware.