“The phenomenal sales success of Apple’s iPad shows no sign of abating, but sales for all other tablets competitors are stagnating and channel inventories are building,” Paul Kunert reports for The Channel Register.
“US tech titan HP is the latest to correct its prices, trimming £50 off the cost of a TouchPad in an effort to get them shifting, with the 16GB and 32GB versions now available for £349 and £429 respectively,” Kunert reports. “Shaving the equivalent of just 12.5 per cent off the entry level TouchPad and a little over 10 per cent on the 32GB system will hardly breathe new life into flatlining sales.”
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Kunert reports, “Numbers from channel analyst Context, which tracks actual sales out data, show that… in the first week of August, HP resellers and distributors managed to punt just 700 across the Western Europe – 100 in the UK – while HP’s Taiwanese rivals flogged a combined 2,300 devices across the region. In contrast, Apple knocked out 160,000 units through distribution last month and another 43,000 in the opening seven days of this month.”
“The lead Apple has built up in the market since April 2010 looks unassailable with distributors saying that demand for the iPad remains strong. “Whatever I can get I can sell straight away,” said one authorized distie,” Kunert reports. “In fact, iPads are the only tablet devices that several large brokers expressed an interest in, as vendors seek alternatives routes to peddle their wares. ‘There is a mountain of surplus tablets in the channel,’ said one, ‘and they are just not shifting.'”
Read more in the full article here.