“The TouchPad is dead, but Hewlett-Packard is giving it a hell of a wake. HP has slashed the price of its $399 tablet computer to $99 after killing the product on Thursday, sparking a buying frenzy,” Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes.
“Don’t do it. That’s because tablets are all about apps. There are just few hundred apps available for the TouchPad, compared to more than 100,000 iOS apps that have been optimized for the iPad and more than 1,000 for tablets running Android (and that figure doesn’t count the several hundred thousand apps built originally for phones that can also run on these devices),” Caulfield writes. “Worse yet, with HP killing its entire WebOS product line, there’s no reason to believe more are coming.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Save your hunge to put towards your iPad 3 like the sane people do.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GetMeOnTop” for the heads up.]
I think most people forget those that just need web and email that would otherwise be forced to buy a cheap desktop for far more than $99 or $149 who simply do not care about apps.
this is sort of bad for apple since there will now be a bunch of people with so so tablets that wont buy a new one in the near future
so next year ipad sales could flatten out just because of this which is a shame
The total number of TouchPads HP manufactured is just a “rounding error,” compared to the number of iPads Apple sells in a quarter. And they were probably sold to people who would not pay $500 for an iPad, this year or next year… 🙂
Can you hackintosh it?
Nothing like buying a piece of junk because its price is slashed and you are getting a “good deal”. Use some common sense here!!!
I can’t agree with your position Mr. Caulfield: “That’s because tablets are all about apps.” I couldn’t give a rats ass about silly two bit apps. I want to use it as an internet reader at night when sitting on my recliner. I want to read a book and have access to email. That’s it. And $99 or $199 is all that’s worth. If HP had a brain, and they don’t, they’d fire CEO and aggressively go after Apple on the low end.
In my city, the TouchPad at $99 for 16GB and $149 for 32GB was the buzz. They were all sold in an hour. My city has a population of 1.1 million. So it’s not small potatoes.
The demand was stunning. The iPad at $499 is a suckers joke. If HP doesn’t reverse their decision on this mania, they’re a lost cause. Maybe Facebook could get on board and buy WebOS and add social networking to my simple list for apps and sell if for $199. They’d kill Apple’s momentum in half in a single year!
HP can’t make any money selling it for $99. They were losing money at $399, which is why they could barely “match” Apple’s iPad price at $499 when TouchPad was released.
After a year and a half, iPad is still selling out at $499, and most people opt to get the more expensive configs. And the momentum grow, with every day that passes without a worthy competitor.
i ordered one off HPs site. Why? So I can use it as a comparison to my iPad2 when people ask me why they should buy an iPad rather than something else.
When Rims’ Playbook line is discontinued, I’ll buy one of those as well if they sell them so cheaply. Same thing for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (it doesn’t seem to be doing so well lately), or the Motorola Zoom.
There are some pretty embarrassing posts on this…. Some people are too in love with their phones and tablets these days to realise that most people dont care about what brand it is…. Apple could buy everyone of these Touchpads, rebrand them, put an apple wallpaper on it… and call it the new OS… and half of you people would be singing praise of how well it multitasks and handles flash… and how u always had faith that apple would come out with it…
If u need something to browse the web and check email, its perfect! who cares if its apple or not…..
Which is why HP had to take 80% off the original iPad-matching price, to sell them off, while Apple sells all they can make (over 9 million of them in the last completed quarter) almost as soon as they are made, for the FULL retail price.
Yup… what you said makes perfect sense. Who cares if it’s an iPad or a TouchPad? 😉 Apparently, everyone cares.
Seriously, you actually wasting time posting on a Mac site?
ahahah, Silverhawk…. yes I am!!!….. Ive never been on one before, and actually laughed when I was reading some of the comments!
I honestly think some people here would sacrifice their lives for Steve Jobs….!
iPad/iPhone is a fantastic product…. there is no denying it runs rings around the HP in almost every way…… but for 100 bucks, there is no denying its a bargain!
Can we go back to Best Buy and get the Toshiba Handybook?
I like Andrew W. Purchased the HP Touchpad for $149 for the 32GB model and to be honest the two of us are huge Apple fanatics but just do happened to realize that we could get a cheap and good tablet that works and doesn’t run Android. We love the iPad but for the price why not purchase this? Is webOS really 100% dead? Not yet bugged shall see how things go now that they sold a ton of these.
They are not selling them for $99 (and $149) because they want lose even more money to support it. I think HP just wanted to get something back (at 80% off original retail price), and then move on.
If another company (such as Amazon) buys or licenses the rights to WebOS, I think they will want to sell their own devices, so they will not be motivated to provide ongoing support for existing Palm and HP WebOS devices.
I’ll bet the initial TouchPad production run was at most half a million. Apple sold over 9 million iPad in the last completed quarter. Maybe Apple should buy the rights to WebOS (along with the Palm patents). Then, for a limited time, give TouchPad owners $99 trade-in to upgrade to an iPad.
A $99 TouchPad or a 15 yr old Macallan single malt? Let me think for a second… Second’s up. Get out the snifter.
Spoken like someone who has his/her priorities straight! That wouldn’t be a contest at all in my house, either!
Saw an ad on TV still advertising the TouchPad at $399. Weird.
John & GM need to get a room already!
I am a hardcore iOS user, and have 6 different iOS devices in my home right now. However, I love trying out new things, so I have owned plenty of competing products, even if just briefly. I have had three Android phones and a B&N Nook Color that i hacked about 500 hundred different ways. I eventually got bored with them and sold them off. I appreciate Android, but it just doesn’t connect with me for some reason.
I picked up a Touchpad for $150 Saturday morning, and I can say that there is more of a chance that I hold onto it than any of those Android devices. It was pretty laggy before the update, but I found it to be much snappier in normal use after it. It did take SEVERAL tries to download. All I can think there is that HP’s servers were overrun with more purchases in one day than in two months combined.
For someone who wants a device for surfing, email, social media, photos, music, and video, the Touchpad is WELL worth $99. Consider that the competition at that price are cheap knockoff Android tablets with resistive screens, no Market, and no upgrade path. The Touchpad blows those devices away. Honestly, after playing with Android tablets running Froyo, Gingerbread, and Honeycomb, I prefer WebOS right now. Obviously that will change very soon as Google gets the bugs worked out and the Android tablet ecosystem gets it in gear, but WebOS is more elegant and easy to use today. If you keep things in this perspective, and don’t expects this to replace an iPad, the Touchpad is definitely worth this price for someone who either doesn’t need apps, or as a second device that runs Flash.
I’m a guy with an HDDVD player, so what do I know about possessing defunct technology?
Don’t care how cheap it is. Why waste money on
junk? For $100 I could buy more cool apps for
my “precious”. I meant my iPad2. 🙂
It may still have some uses. Vid, music player for the kids. Nothing is obsolete until it absolutely does nothing anymore.
HP are still by far the biggest seller of computers on the planet, followed by Dell who between them own about 30% of the world market, far more than Apple could ever dream of. Nokia are still by far the biggest maker of mobile devices in the world. Apple don’t make the best desktops or laptops or phones and i build computers that would blow them out of the water, but they are very good at marketing and putting together a package. Very little of the technology in an Apple product is designed by Apple. I will have to admit that the iPad2 is quite a good bit of kit if you feel you’ve got a use for it, but in a marketplace that is moving as fast as this, its practically outdated before its released.