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One Final Manufacturing Run of Touchpads
Accepted on the first attempt, lochnessie writes "HP has announced a limited manufacturing run of Touchpads to be available in the next few weeks. The HP employee making the announcement posted 'I think it's safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response' to their massively discounted, sold-at-a-huge-loss tablet."
So first come first serve, should be "interesting".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
If they're selling for around $200 on ebay, maybe HP should try to sell them for $250 or $300, whatever their break-even point is (not counting R&D), just to keep their name out there. It seems like Marketing 101: if there's demand for your product, keep making it.
Of course, I was against their pulling out of the PC and handheld markets. I was also against their buying Compaq to begin with. The more players out there, the more competition and innovation. With fewer players, we'll see a reduction in quality and an increase in prices. I think HP shouldn't walk away from an entire business like that. They should hire in some great engineers and great management and make a go of it, not just surrender and withdraw.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Is this the return of Dotcom accounting?
Sell at a loss, make up in volume?
Profit!!!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Really, they are surprised that people will buy things that are sold at a loss? This whole thing proves that tablets that don't have cult like fan boys are still not priced low enough to make people really want to get ride of there laptops. Though I can't imagine why they would want to make more of the things so they can lose more money, they must be some sort of a bigger plan behind this. Well that or HP really is committing corporate suicide. [Yahoo Finance]
'I think it's safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response' to their massively discounted, sold-at-a-huge-loss tablet."
All I have to say is: really? Wow, and to think I was surprised the HP tablet failed... actually, I wasn't but oh well.
On the other hand, the fact that they are doing another manufacturing run indicates that the first was probably profitable even at the reduced price (why the hell else would you make more?), meaning HP probably made up in quantity for the lowered price. Also, maybe tablet makers should consider lowering their prices. Just, you know, a thought.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
How much money did Microsoft burn trying to get the XBOX off the ground? Sometimes it pays to make a little investment in the future. If HP had sold these even at $150/$200 or maybe $200/$250, sure they would have lost money on each unit, but how long until it overtook iPad? Tablets are going to be selling for $100 in 5 years anyway, and HP could have sold a LOT of them at a loss to make it into the market. Once the established leader had been displaced, they could have made tons of money on licensing, app store purchases, etc. Maybe even eventually on hardware. I think they were looking for a home-run, and when they didn't get it, they just gave up all hope. Bad move on HP's part.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
If I had to guess, it's probably because they already have orders in with their suppliers that they can't cancel and contractual obligations to fulfill. The costs of making this final run are probably sunk costs, and they figured they might as well go ahead and make those last $99 sales before everything is shut down and done.
Is prefixing a submission from a first-timer about the fact that it's a first-time submission really considered news-worthy? What benefit does it offer to the slashdot community as a whole?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
... because you can make up for it in volume...
Even with the low price and selling at a loss I still wouldn't buy one. Tablet are IMO useless things. Much like cars: you only miss it once you have one.
A limited run!
Vintage spectaculare!
I'll take one for $223,498,324,987.99!!!
It will be worth so much more in 50 years when it becomes a historical gem worth trillions! /snark
I'm guessing they had a lot of components and half built machines left. They decided they'd make more money finishing and selling them than just dumping the components through a surplus dealer.
So, HP is making another batch of Touchpads, after already announcing that they were being discontinued. The 'overwhelming demand' is based on the $99 'firesale' price, which leads us to assume they were being sold at a significant loss. A few possible conclusions:
1.) HP was marking up their hardware costs by an astronomical percentage. If they are putting more touchpads into production, and planning on selling them at or near the closeout price, that must mean they still see room for profit to be made (even if it is razor thin).
2.) HP is just flat-out stupid, and is planing on losing more money by selling Touchpads at a continued loss.
3.) The WebOS brand isn't dead after all, and this was all a giant marketing ploy to jump-start the WebOS community. This makes sense even if HP plans on selling off the brand. With a huge influx of users, its now instantly more valuable than it was last month.
I'm personally thinking its a combination of all three.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
Nobody else has a 9.7 in screen, so they can't sell the surplus screens to some other tablet manufacturer, They probably thought of dumping them, but they are probably chemically hazardous so that would cost them money. (These days you can't get away with dumping PCB's (printed circuit boards) into a landfill...
because everyone on here hates profits and evil capitalist companies so much selling at a loss must really get you excited? This is a business plan you all can believe in. So why are some of you complaining?
I'm beginning to think this whole HP TouchPad sell-off is just a marketing ploy to get people to group-think and buy up every available unit as the price grows, due to demand, beyond the original value of the product, where people then get into an availability craze, and thus HP swamps the populous with an extreme number of TouchPads with users who want apps for their WebOS, and so HP expands their app store and makes billions.
I actually really wanted one, strictly for web browsing. I don't care if it won't have apps or support in the future, though the projects going around to put Android on them will certainly add value to something I only wanted to a browser anyway.
300+ dollars for the device was way too much, thats why no one was buying them and they had to discontinue them. Once they hit 100 dollars though then people wanted them. I know I tried to find one because I just wanted a simple device for surfing the net, maybe watching a video and so on while I was playing games or watching tv or whatnot without the hassle of lugging around a laptop or going down to my computer desk.
HP will probablly not sell them at the discounted price and trying to sell by the hype and no one will buy one, then they will drop the price to dump them and again they will sell out and HP will probablly be confused as to why.
If they're making more in order to keep selling them at the promotion price, then it sounds as though they're still making a profit at that price. Why would they stop?
(Unless this whole thing was just a marketing ploy to stimulate demand.)
I'd bet the next batch will be $200 16GB variant and only sold via hp.com.
I watch in almost horror. The original HP might have seen this totally differently. They might have said, 'you know what, people actually love this - we just have to find a method of delivery on price'. The damn thing was aimed at business tablet users. Its been poorly aimed at the bleeding edge geeks, and and its missing the I pod and Android market because it ended up being a snooty, spotty, snobby product.
So it did not sell. And HP got the hump and picked up their ball and went home. Only in doing the sell off big hump, suddenly they found hundreds of thousands of people actually desperate for interesting tech done at the right price.
And at the same time its gone off on some mentally unstable lash against its bread and butter and has decided its going to do some whistful software thing. All its core hardware and good stuff is going to be dumped, sold off or whatever.
Whoever is on the HP board right now, and whoever is responsible for Apothoker and his demented drive into Oblivion needs firing.
Someone should get hold of it RIGHT now and make a proper commitment to WebOS, and to making the devices *at* cost, or below if you can get the app model in working shape. And the same rough commitment for the servers and PC divisions.
There is actually still time to reconsider the recent touchpad thing and be smart about it. If Hannspre can make a tablet for £150, then there must be something deeply wrong at HP if it can't scale its production to get it done.
err apple and google make BILLIONS on app stores.
No, they don't. There is a large amount of revenue but also a large amount of expenses. I think they total they MAKE is more like a hundred million - still quite a lot but not the billions that are spent in the app store.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even right now, after several days of decreasing demand and increasing supply, Amazon is currently selling the 16GB model for ~$240 and you'll be hard-pressed to get one off eBay for less than $200.
As a matter of fact I think it would actually benefit consumers if HP raised the price on the Touchpads somewhat. At $100 there's too much incentive for third-parties to buy all the available stock and resell at a higher price; this not only increases the price for consumers, but it also makes the devices more difficult and time-consuming to acquire, increases the length of time it takes for a consumer to actually acquire a device, and significantly increases the opportunity for fraud. In toto, middlemen and conmen benefit while consumers suffer.
If HP sold the tablets at closer to their true market price (say, $175), there would be significantly less reseller demand, consumers would be able to acquire the devices cheaper, faster and easier, and there would be fewer scumbags defrauding people with the offer of cheap TouchPads.
This is just a brilliant attempt to widely disseminate compromised hardware in order to subvert Anonymous.
you read it here first...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I've been under the layman's impression that electronics are priced on the low-volume for X profits side as opposed to the high-volume for X profits side of the curve. Does this indicate that maybe that isn't such a good economic model, or is this a fluke case were demand will quickly evaporate?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
At that price point, it's worth the risk to see if I can find good use cases for myself. Experimenting with this technology at $400 is a non-starter.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The CEO of HP is an idiot. The more money he losses the more the board of directors will want to kick him out and replace him with a CEO actually aliagned with HPs assets and image rather than trying to turn a non service company into a SAP. They would probably have better luck hiring a Bryers CEO to make HP into an ice cream company
HP is not IBM by any sense of the means. Let em croak.
http://saveie6.com/
Anyone got an idea how I can preorder one? I can't find them anywhere, but for $99 it would be great for my 3yr old to watch spongebob on and maybe play some games.
So the supposedly sell them at a big loss, yet they decided to make more of them? Either they're crazy, or those things cost way less than $99 to make in volume, and since they don't have to support them at all, their overheads on those sales are negligible.
Perhaps HP has just found that there's big market for cheap, no-support, hackable computing devices? Sometimes opportunity may be staring you in the eyes and you can miss it!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Someone should get hold of it RIGHT now and make a proper commitment to WebOS, and to making the devices *at* cost, or below if you can get the app model in working shape.
If you can make a device below cost, I think you've got something.
The underpants gnomes want HP to give their ???? back.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you want to see what sort of price the market has set, go onto eBay. The 16GB version is selling.. and I mean with real bidders.. at about £200 ($325), with the 32GB version coming in at around £230 ($370). So this is perhaps the sort of price point they should have been selling at.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Is this the return of Dotcom accounting? Sell at a loss, make up in volume?
Almost. I think it's the model Toyota used to create a market for hybrids before the battery technology was affordable: sell at a loss to build a base of loyal supporters who can recognize a superior product. Though in some ways, this is the opposite; rather than heralding the future, this is more akin to exploring the past (which is to say, what could have been). I'd definitely call this a stunt; why else would they make another run at something they're selling at a loss anyway? Why was the HP Pre 3 debuted two weeks ago? They're not out yet.
I'd like to see webOS succeed. With MeeGo mostly dead, Openmoko fully dead, and LiMo completely forgotten, it would be nice for webOS to make another run at things. Otherwise, we're left with Android (Linux by kernel, not OS), iOS, and BlackBerry OS (Java), plus some minor players destined to fail (Windows Phone, Java ME). WebOS is our (current) last chance at a (mostly) open phone OS (look, a non-jailbreak third-party app store!).
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
HP could keep Touchpads flying off shelves even at a more reasonable (to them) price point. All they need to do is take a note from Apple and include a bootcamp-like installable option for Android. Mac sales went through the roof when people realized they could always fall back to Windows if they didn't like OS X and at least they would have still have a rad computer. HP should use the same strategy to attract users to the Touchpad and get them using and hooked on WebOS.
That's why I didn't buy a touchpad at full price - WebOS is too much of a risk, as a consumer, due to its lack of developer support.
HP: You can thank me by sending me a free Touchpad 2. ;)
or else!
First you announce the discontinuation of the product you just brought out, so abruptly that the ads for them continue to run for another day or two, and institute a huge price cut (which means anyone who bought one at full price the week before will be an active HP hater for the rest of their lives), then, as people rush to buy them, you tell Best Buy to pull all their stock and ship it back, then you announce that you're going to build more of them.
Do they now have 3 or 4 different CEOs who take turns running the company every few days without ever talking to each other?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Why would HP announce another manufacturing run for a 'massively discounted, sold-at-a-huge-loss' tablet.
They should have said 'Continuing to mismanage our company we will manufacture more products that we can sell at a huge loss until our shareholders have nothing left of value'. I can't wait until the start giving away their high end servers for free.
Nobody else has a 9.7 in screen, so they can't sell the surplus screens to some other tablet manufacturer,
Umm, you seem to have a weird definition of "nobody".
The BEST SELLING tablets: the iPad and iPad2 both have 9.7" 4:3 screens. Rumored to be exactly the same model as the HP Touchpad...
Stop spreading incorrect information.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
Anyone going to get an iPad is just going to get one.
But lets say you had been thinking about ANY alternative tablet. Why would you get one now, when there's a possibility in a few months you can get a $500 tablet for $99?
I'd almost think HP had been taken over by Apple, but I'm pretty sure they are just basically insane. It make no sense for HP to spend one dime more when they loose a LOT of money per tablet sold.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not in the US, that's for sure.
We're selling them at a loss. But we'll make it up in volume.
No f*cking wonder HP is going under.
Have gnu, will travel.
A Happy Meal(tm) will cost $100.
Yes, they may make a loss on these unit, but not as much as they would make if they just scrapped the 100.000 parts and sub-assemblies they have lying in a warehouse.
If those parts are worth $200/piece, that would be a $20M loss.
Spending an extra $100 to turn them into units and selling them at $250 (nobody said these ones would be $99 also!) that would be a $5M loss.
(Shipping will only be a few dollars and reseller margins on these things are so thin at the best of times, they just want to get people into their store and sell them accessories)
The profit margins won't meet their target levels. you have to realise that in companies like HP just shifting stuff at belows its forecast profit levels is going to lead to two things.
1) the project will be canned very quickly
2) You will get your pink slip it you are heading up the project.
2a) the leader of the project will probably take a few more people with them. This could even include people who didn't fail in their part of the project
(I say this as an ex-HP employee who got let go in a situation just like this. We made a good profit but not enough to satisfy the bean counters...)
They will make some more to clear inventory of items that are in the supply chain that have probably been paid for or where HP does not want to piss off their suppliers by leaving them with a shed load of kit that is naff all use to anyone else.
Quite how many they will make depends on how big/long their supply chain is. There is a good change that there are literally 10's of 40ft containers on ships out at sea at this very moment full of Touchpads.
Nah, it'll be okay, they'll just make it back in VOLUME!
You joke. But,if they sell volumes,even at a loss, that means that there are going to be much more users ou there, and a bigger market share.
this phase of selling at a loss might be the needed spark to jump start an ecosystem,bringing enough users to attract app developper's interrest. And then in turn make the platform more attractive to additionnal waves of users and devs. And all these mean money coming from the application store.
this gamble has worked for game consoles in the past (where the number of available games is much more important,and manufacturer make back the loss per console in license for the games). If HP is lucky, it migth work for them.
also as other have reported,they very likely still have parts orders somewhere. It might be cheaper for HP to assemble the device and sel them at a loss, than scraping the parts (and maybe in the process gain more users).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
HP doesn't want to go back into the business after all. They are just getting rid of stock and supply contracts in a cheaper way then just scrapping it all.
The 100 bucks is at least some revenue to offset the huge negative rows they be writing for this one.
BUT what a LOT seem to be forgetting is the avarice and bitterness play a role in business. Selling the touchpad at 99 bucks must be throwing a HUGE spanner in the works for all other tablet makers. Suddenly a 800 dollar iPad seems a bit expensive doesn't it? Even cheap chinese models with bare minimum specs seem overpriced in comparison.
Nothing like exiting a market and throwing a nice big "FUCK YOU" grenade in the crowd of your ex-competitors trying to grasp the remains of your corpse.
HP is NOT intrested in the breakneck low margin consumer market anymore. It may be a stupid strategy but even at HP they can't reverse policy in the same month. For now HP is exiting this industry and any nerdy re-calculation of a minimum price point strategy is wasted. They have had far brighter people then the average slashdotter do this. The 99 dollar price is there for a reason. You may not like the reason but HP clearly does.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One other problem is that major retailers like futureshop and best buy have removed the item from their website so we cannot monitor their availability.
I'd get one at 99 and drop android on it once it's working (IF they get it done that is)
Reminds me of that SNL Change Bank commerical:
====================
Paul McElroy: A lot of people don't realize that change is a two-way street. You can come in with sixteen quarters, eight dimes, and four nickels - we can give you a five-dollar bill. Or we can give you five singles. Or two singles, eight quarters, and ten dimes. You'd be amazed at the variety of the options you have.
Customer #3: I was driving through Pennsylvania on the tollway, and to save time I was using the exact-change lanes. I had just run out of quarters, and I was getting a bit nervous when I spotted a sign for a Citiwide branch at the next exit. Let me tell you, it was a pretty good feeling.
Paul McElroy: I have had people come in with wrinkled ten-dollar bills to exchange for new crisp bills to put in birthday cards. We can handle special requests like that, usually in the same day.
Customer #4: I'd just returned from a business trip to London, and all the cash I had was a five-pound note. Citiwide wasn't able to convert it to dollars, but they did give me four guineas, two crowns, four shillings, and ten pence.
Paul McElroy: All the time, our customers ask us, "How do you make money doing this?" The answer is simple: Volume. That's what we do.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
Amazing how everyone seems to take iSuppli's $318 bill of materials guess as gospel truth. We have no way of knowing what the true figure is. A great deal of it depends on quantity purchased and how hard a bargain someone can strike with the parts vendors.
They just announced selling their PC business, along with WebOS hardware, to focus on high margin business.
It doesn't matter that they could earn billions every year, it matters that they can tell investors they have high margins. There is absolutely no way they would accept 10%, before distibution costs and advertising is taken out.
Apple builds dedicated manufacturing to guarantee availability, and ensure the company won't set up an extra line to make replicas to sell locally, and other tricks to make sure they have a price advantage and market lock. Then turn around and sell it at good profit margins to a loyal and growing fan base.
You can't get the magic price point without going in with a good plan, and based on reports in the money mags, the plan was "jump on the pad bandwagon." That's worse than no plan at all.
The tablets aren't designed to run licensed games or anything like that
Yes they are. All tablets from all manufacturer are designed to run applications, including games, from an official application store. And manufacturer get a share of what is sold on these stores.
For iDevices, it's Apple AppStore.
For standard Google Android, it's Android Market Place.
For webOS, it's App Catalog.
and I didn't pay attention what Microsoft is calling / going to call theirs.
(and, i a way, it's called "steam" for most gaming PCs)
But no matter what, there's a way with which the make can earn money through sold software.
The only subtle difference is how much users can go outside this default source for applications :
- on iDevices, the almighty Apple makes it as much impossible as they can make it to go outise of the AppStore. End-users have to jump through hoops to install anything else, which wasn't approved by St-Jobs.
- on Androids, there's still the possibility to use alternate repositories, like Amazon's. (although some handphone carrier try to make this options hidden). And no matter what, you can still install software using the "adb install" command.
- on webOS, there's always the possibility to pu the device into dev mode and do pretty much anything you want (like installing Preware - a manager for application installation which also supports homebrew and F/LOSS repository)
The most critical part for this source of revenue to work: you need a big enough ecosystem.
- AppStore has already gazillions of Apps, a very good marketing. Thus it attracts users, which in turn attracts developers to bring even more apps.
- Although its a late comer, Android managed to get a good enough number for apps.
- Whereas webOS was really to late into the game and didn't have that many users and thus neither enough developers, the firesale and liquidation of spare parts, might attract enough users to catch the developers' attention.
Ease of developing might play some role :
iOS: not widely used Objectc-C + Proprietary development platform.
Android: the "omnipresent in the busniess world" Java-like (with only the bytecode and it's exxecusion beoing different), or native
webOS: web-level skills ("even script kiddies know it" HTML5+CSS+Javascript) or native (widdely used C/C++ + SDL, etc.)
That might explain why, until now, despite having a small userbase, webOS still managed to get an active and motivated although small community of developpers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]