HP has announced that it will keep the HP TouchPad permanently discounted $100 from the original retail price of $500. Following last’s weekend sale of the TouchPad at the reduced price point, HP has said that it is “pleased with customer response” to the price drop, and that the TouchPad’s price will be permanently cut to $400.
TouchPad sales have been unnoticeable at best, and this price cut can be seen as a clear move for HP to stay relevant in light of the iPad’s dominance.
HP needs to sell more TouchPads. Larger sales numbers encourage developers to develop for the tablet’s webOS platform, and a vibrant, third-party development community is what HP desperately needs right now for the TouchPad to have any traction at all in what is increasingly becoming an iPad culture.
As GigaOM notes, third-party resellers can still discount the TouchPad, so there’s a good chance that even cheaper deals will be offered on HP’s tablet.
HP realizes the dire situation that the TouchPad is in, and the company promises that it is working on upcoming models of its tablet line with faster specs and integrated mobile broadband radios.
What do you think of the HP TouchPad? Does it stand a chance against the iPad? Or will it fall way of the Motorola Xoom?
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
20 responses to “HP Drops Price on TouchPad by $100 to Compete With iPad [Report]”
I believe this was one of the products marked “DOA” if I’m not mistaken. lol
honestly the touchpad is a really nice device webOS is the iPad’s most dangerous competitor sure, it doesn’t have a million apps, but the UI is gorgeous and smart. Hp really botched the launch of the device, but it’s 3.0.2 update really makes it shine. Try one out before you make a judgement.
I have no need to try it out. iPad has four “killer apps” for me:
1) App Store to access all my iOS purchases.
2-3) iPod/iTunes to access/sync/buy all the media I manage with my existing desktop iTunes and Apple account.
4) Netflix, which may or may not arrive some day.
I, like a lot of people, have iOS (or even Android) “inertia” that will be hard to overcome.
I just paiid $ for $23.87 an iPad 2 32-GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $ 38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $ 657 which only cost me $ 62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it al from, http://to.ly/aUxz
Totally right. I.m writing this on my ipad but i would prefer my Pre’s webOS anyday. Palm did such an amazing job with the UI that its hard to beat in terms of intuition and usability. I bet it works even better on a tablet.
Of course, tablets are more about the apps so HP needs to get those going asap. Bundling their back to school computers with this tablet would not be a bad idea.
I wonder if Apple just buy Palm and of course the whole WebOS. :D
nice tablet,but pretty useless without decent content to use on it, this is why iPad is way ahead of competitors by having the best well established app store
webOS is in various respects much superior to iOS. The device itself is not much of a match for the iPad 2, however. BUT, if one is on the market for a non-iPad device, I would say this is one of the best on the market. Honeycomb is not particularly compelling.
Then it’s not for you. Simple as that.
tinyurl.com/2df4ccp
Economics 101 : Lowering price increases quantity demanded. It does NOT increase demand.
We can thus conclude that they are trying to get rid of stock. Dropping the price does not magically move the demand curve to the right.
Boy, was I right about this. =)