HP Touchpad Sale

[PAH]

Why has HP decided to ditch this product after less than two months on the market?

Very poor initial sales (see the Cartman vid someone posted the other day for example of how brand means everything to Apple iTurd lovers ) so they said "fook it, not worth the hassle"?

Seems the device offering web browsing and email would fit 90% of the tablet audience's requirements. How many iApps are really that much better than the free HTML5 webapp equivalents that will be rocking up soon if they're not available already?

Not interested at all in any tablet at the more usual price of 300-400 notes, when a decent smartphone offers similar features yet more practicality when out and about. For around the house, my laptop does more, better, and for not much more money, and it has a proper keyboard and DVD player too.

[DaveB]

Don't bother, it's a dead platform. No app store, no support, no development.

Even for £90 it's not worth it.

[redgiant]

I think there is life in the device longer term if you are able to get Android on there (which some people have). It's similar to flashing a smart phone I would imagine.

[portseven]

Tried but was unsuccessful.

Only available for store collection and not home delivery.

However, none of my local stores had any stock.

Same here, tried PCWorld, Currys, Comet, CPW

Some of the Tier2 (Dabs, Expansys) retailers still showing as having stock, but at the old price

[Durbs]

Don't bother, it's a dead platform. No app store, no support, no development.

Even for £90 it's not worth it.

I reckon it is, tried for one of the 32GB ones last night for £115. Had one in my cart using the iPhone and then made the mistake of firing up the laptop instead a bit later to do the sale, by which time it was sold out.

£115 for a tablet with a decent screen, 32Gig of storage that handles video, web and email is a bargain and i'll be looking today to snap one up. Even if its just used as a video player for the kids in the car its a good buy.

[PAH]

Some of the Tier2 (Dabs, Expansys) retailers still showing as having stock, but at the old price

HP will refund the difference, apparently. Not sure how reliable that info is, seen it on the internet.

Worth looking into if you can't get one at the sale price.

[d000hg]

Don't bother, it's a dead platform. No app store, no support, no development.

Even for £90 it's not worth it.

Why not? Many users don't want an app-store and if the current things work, support and development are non-critical.

If you keep it only a year and then upgrade, it's still decent value for money.

[PAH]

I think I now understand the marketing.

HP are intentionally selling this as a loss leader to drive everyone onto their webOS platform.

Within weeks they will have sold millions of these Touchpads and decide to reverse their 'decision to pull out of the market', saying they underestimated the demand.

They've recently used a similar sell it cheap to gain market share approach with their superb little HP Microserver. Currently available for around 200 quid but with 100 quid cashback. No-one can compete with that for a four bay mini NAS server. No-one. They've been offering it for months with that deal, so not just liquidation of stock, but a clever marketing ploy.

[Clippy]

Why has HP decided to ditch this product after less than two months on the market?

It's a casualty of their decision to get out of hardware which no longer has high margins.

In the last few years, HP have aggressively built their hardware business to become, by sales, the No.1 hardware manufacturer.

Hence, now is a good time to sell the business.

O2 did a similar thing a few years ago. Prior to being sold to Telefonica, they were aggressively adding subscribers by offering some stonking deals particularly at contract renewal.

Come time to sell the business, they were the UK's No.1 mobile network operator, by subscriber numbers, which was reflected in their sale price.

[scooterscot]

Why are so many people desperate to by the 21st century betamax?