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HP TouchPad To Be Liquidated At Fire Sale Prices
Hugh Pickens writes "According to an article by Tony Bradley, news is spreading quickly online that HP is going to clear out its vast TouchPad inventory by dropping the price to an offer you can't refuse. Rumor has it that beginning Saturday the 16Gb TouchPad will be $99, and the 32Gb TouchPad will be a measly $149. 'It is actually a fairly capable tablet. It's just not an iPad 2,' writes Bradley. 'For $500 it was a joke. For $300 it was still a shady deal. For $99 it's a steal.' HP has learned the hard way, and quickly pulled the plug on its tablet, proving that HP never had a solid tablet or mobile strategy and that it was really just looking for an excuse to get out. 'The reality is that my Best Buy is swimming in unsold HP TouchPad inventory,' adds Bradley. 'I went out tonight and picked mine up at the regular $400 price to beat the rush. Situations like this are why they invented price matching. I can just go back with my receipt once the fire sale starts and get the price adjusted and the difference refunded.'"
From their price matching FAQ:
Does the HP TouchPad tablet qualify for the Price Match policy?
No. The HP TouchPad is on clearance and we will no longer be selling the units so we will not offer any price matches. We do offer a 60-day return/exchange policy for this product.
The lesson here is not about solid engineering, eye-catching design, or pricing.
Yes it is. The iPad is a solid products and has become the touchstone. If you want to compete with something that's perceived as the tablet you have be either:
- significantly better and the same price
- at least as good at a lower price
Sadly the TouchPad was neither. To bad too, I'd have liked Palm's progeny to at least survive.
Most people who bought an iPad don't even know the specs..
The vast majority of people don't know the specs of their PC's either. The great thing is that with tablets they don't have to. Tablets are bought on the following considerations: "Can I run the popular apps?", "Does it feel responsive?", "Does the battery last me at least a whole day of use?" The iPad kills on all 3 of these criteria. And what were the most often heard complaints against the Touchpad ? That it "felt slow" and there were no apps. No one except uber geeks cares about tablet specs.
Apple has gotten to the point where people just buy their products because everybody chants how great they are.
That's a myth. Apple users are some of the most critical around. That's why you keep hearing very vocal complaints about problems with Apple systems that impact a small minority of its users. And a lot of the new iPad/iPhone users who aren't traditional Apple fans would leave at the drop of a hat if something better came along. These are just regular consumers, not geeks, they go with what works.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Try WebOS first. It's actually a really good OS. It's linux. Rooting it is as simple as typing in the Konami Code to put it in Developer Mode (root).
There are a lot of homebrew apps for it, with their own Homebrew appstore, PreWare. Well, not an appstore really because it's all free there.
Palm's problem was they had crappy hardware for it, and insanely bad advertising. HP hasn't done anything much with it since they bought it a year ago. Sad. A very intuitive and good looking OS. The one thing you will miss out with on the TouchPad is the gesture area that is on the phones. They make task switching pretty awesome when you are multitasking a lot of things. Another bad move by HP to leave that off the TouchPad.