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HP Reviving the $99 Touch Pad On December 11th

Posted by timothy on from the this-too-shall-pass dept.

Frankie70 writes "Starting Sunday, December 11th at 6:00 p.m. Central time, 16GB and 32GB Touchpads will be available on HP's ebay store. A $79 accessory bundle will also be available, which includes a case, charging dock and wireless keyboard. The caveat with this deal is that these are refurbished TouchPads rather than the brand new models sold during the first firesale."

2 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS by Rogue+Haggis+Landing · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Considering the multi-billion dollar loss WebOS has been so far, merely selling a few more next year at a slightly higher price doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me.

    There's a bit of a false assumption here. The money that HP has lost on WebOS is a sunk cost. It's gone and it's not coming back, no matter what happens. HP should be thinking entirely of the future at this point. Can WebOS generate a worthwhile profit from today onward? If so, they should hold on to it, even if it never makes back the initial investment.

    People often don't think this way. If I lose a ton of money on an asset I'm likely to get rid of it, even if it stands to be mildly profitable in the future. HP shouldn't be thinking that way. (I should point out that I have no idea if they actuall are or not.)

    That said, I'd love an open source WebOS, if only to keep Google honest.

  2. Re:this may be an unexpected lesson by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, your master plan is to make up the profit in volume of sales?

    So, the volume price is $99, the manufacturing cost *per TouchPad* is $318 (http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx).

    So, HP "make" -$219 per TouchPad. I can see why they need volume sales to make up the profit... ;)

    I'm not sure where the myth that these sorts of devices cost buttons to make and are just sold at crazy high "all gravy" margins? Oh wait, it's what they think Apple are doing with the iPad. Even the really good Android competitors to the iPad are only $100 or so less - so still in the $400 range.

    Selling them at $99 does not make for a sound business plan unless you plan to make up the money by some other channel (like having your games console as a loss leader, for example). A $219 loss per tablet is a pretty steep loss leader though, by anyone's measure.