HP slashes iPad-competing TouchPad price to $399 1 month after release - Page 3

I don't care if they sell this tablet for $99.99, I still wouldn't want one. This tablet has no future besides becoming a doorstop pretty soon.

HP used to have a relationship with Apple when they OEMed Apple iPod - I think they should have continued that relationship with all their follow on products, including iPad. But than HP went out and bought Palm OS and they had to come up with a product to justify that purchase and here we are - No different state than what Palm was on.

Maybe HP should give out their pads with any HP Desktop/laptop purchases, if they really want to infiltrate the pad market.

Hmm, missed that one. Did read:
"Oh, we believe in that, too," Steve shot back, without skipping a beat. "Apple will have an affordable 3M machine before anyone else. I only have one question. What's a megaflop?" (Jan 1983)

Though the recent inflation in the patent market may have made it a good deal even if web-os sinks.

So it will just stop functioning "pretty soon"?

Good one :-)

It doesn't function well today and it won't function well in a few months from now either.

I think that HP has a much more frequent update schedule than Apple has and this tablet will be left behind pretty soon.

First of all, I don't think Apple has anything to worry about here. Selling at a loss is a good way to peddle second rate products to compete with better products on the market. However the simple counter Apple has for this is to put older models of the iPad on the market at a lower price for bargain hunters. It seems to be working for retailers selling the iPhone.

You are wrong. Here is what people see when they look at tablets. Playbook basically stole webOS cards, and android 3 has tile that go up and down instead of across.







All three look nearly identical. iPad is just a row of apps, which is good or bad depnding on how you see things, but looks different from the other three.

Perhaps it will work with my Zune.

... but, sadly, it doesn't come in brown...

I very much prefer HP's tablet to a clunky old Android tablet.

I agree. You get what you pay for.

Interesting debate. My sense is that HP has staked their reputation, not to mention billions of dollars, on TouchPad. Unfortunately for them, they have an extremely steep hill to climb due to the runaway success of iPad. This holds true for the manufacturers of Android tablets with a major difference being they have nowhere near the R&D sunk into their devices. Apple and Google are quite frankly in a better position since they can leverage the huge volume of smartphones which Palm (now HP) never established. Developers will only develop for volume platforms and today that ain't WebOS. My point is, no matter how slick a piece of technology WebOS is without volume they will never win over developers...and without developers they will never get to volume. Classic problem which the geniuses at HP where ignorant of or thought they could somehow overcome. In short, TouchPad and probably the handset are done and HP will either sell off the division or close it down (ala Cisco and Flip...) Either way, HP looses in my opinion...

I know of exactly ZERO people that own anything BUT an iPad.

I live in a metropolitan city of appx. 1 million.

I've seen numbers like 63% , but I honestly think Apple's tablet market share is more like 80-90%

iOS is more utilitarian, but touchpad is barely functional because of poor performance.

The cards metaphor is nice, but slow and sluggish to use.

Free with Cornflakes would be about the right tone. Perhaps a choice, a plastic submarine or TouchPad? BTW where are the pad jokes from the Apple haters?

Not to mention, Rubinstein had nothing to do with the development of OS X or NeXTStep/Openstep. He was strictly hardware.

This is a smart move by hp, however I think that they will still not get the effect they where hopping for. In two months acer will release a 300$ tablet archos will soon release their first licensed android product which will include a sub 300$ tablet and one with a disk harddrive for around 360$. Android has already became a household name people know what it is now, people will prefer an android tablets over an operating system they have never heard of. Hell android by name is more known then iOS.

How is it that you have almost 300 posts here on this forum while saying something so ignorant?

The report was that 30% of tablets "shipped" in Q2 were Android tablets. (15.1 million total tablets shipped in Q2... among them were 9.3 million iPads and 4.6 million Android tablets)

But... that's just tablets shipped to stores.... and just for the past quarter. (we don't know how many Android tablets were actually sold to consumers)

Technically Android does have 30% market share based on how many tablets were shipped. But compared to tablets actually in use today? Not even close...

The truth is... Apple sold 28 million iPads to consumers since April 2010... and I bet all of them are in use today.

That's why you see so many iPads out in the world... compared to maybe a couple million Honeycomb or other Android tablets sold to date.

Yes, at these prices they make great chew toys for dogs. And the wife can use a new cutting board in the kitchen, and now I've got something to scoop the dog poop up with!
HP has outdone themselves this time.

I know of at least one company that was given a whole bunch of Motorolla Xooms for each employee, so you'll typically see in the office a maybe 70/30 mix of iPads and Xooms (favoring iPads). But the Xooms were given away for free, Nvidia (who makes the graphics chipset) is trying to kickstart development of apps on the tablet by giving it away. The iPads are bought by people spending their own money.

Anecdotally your point is strong and I see the same thing. Very few people would actually purchase one of these non-iPad tablets by choice, and the only people I know that have one had them given to them.

If the only way they stand a chance at gathering serious app development is by giving them away, then you know they're in serious trouble.

Don't forget shorter battery life, worse screen or unresponsive touch interface (either because of crappy screen hardware or poor OS). These are the things that matter to customers the most, when you pick one up and actually use it, what's it feel like? Is it heavy? Does it respond quickly? How long does it last?

Not a bunch of nonsense about ports and gigabytes. Average people don't care or know about that stuff anyway. And judging by the sales of iPads, it's average people who are the customers, not nerds.

A little off topic but have you been in a Staples lately? I feel like I'm looking at the next zombie retailer with the lifespan of a gnat.

The place is reeks of a bygone era of Computer Citys, CompUSAs and Futureshops. I don't see how they stay in business for that much longer. Everything they sell is a commodity that can be gotten online for cheaper, their stores are in disarray, demo units broken or disabled. The number of employees walking around in the store typically outnumber the customers. The only time I've gone in there is to look at something physically before purchasing it online, or to buy something very very small (like markers).

I just don't know how or why a company like this is still in business, they must've stored up some cash in the past or get their money some other way.

And even that number of shipped Android tablets is very soft because only Moto is actually reporting their number of shipped tablets. Samsung isn't reporting device unit sales numbers at all, HTC is but is including tablets in with smartphones and not providing any estimate of the split.

HP should have made the TouchPad noticeably cheaper than the iPad from the get go in order to stand out from the iPad. But they probably can't afford to do so. After all, isn't this just a short term price reduction?

They could certainly afford to do it, the way that MS has spent billions buying share in the console market and wasted billions attempting to buy share in search. I think that this could be more about retail psychology than anything else.

ie. If something is launched at $500, then reduced to $300 that seems a bigger bargain than if it was simply launched at $300. By launching at the same price as the iPad they attempted to establish an equivalence of value between the products. If a reduction is time-limited then it makes a purchase more urgent and may result in a larger volume than a permanent reduction.

The real question is, what is the motive for this reduction. Is HP making a genuine play to become the 2nd biggest tablet shipper by deep discounting and building a platform fast? Or is HP just staring at vast warehouses of tablets that aren't selling and discounting in desparation? We probably won't know which unless we get some leaks out of their suppliers about how many more units they build in this quarter.

I suspect it's your last suggestion, a warehouse full of inventory, that is nearer the truth. Maybe HP can repurpose them all to be TV remotes for Comcast or Verizon or something useful. It would be a shame to waste the hardware. Here's an idea, drop the price to $150 and turn them into Etch A Sketches and sell through Mattel Toys.

Isn't this price reduction supposed to last only a weekend?

Furthermore, affordability is not about whether they can financially cope with the margin reduction. It may have to do with corporate policy, which at HP may dictate that all product categories must have a certain margin floor, or HP would exit the category. HP took its sweet time launching the TouchPad, fueling hopes that it really got its ducks prior to production. Unfortunately, those hopes were not met and the product is as undistinguished and unpolished as the rest of the non-iPads. This suggests they were struggling with other pre-production issues. Let's not forget that Jon Rubenstein has been effectively moved aside to a meaningless title just prior to the launch.

Yes, but lets face it, then there will be another 'limited' reduction around labour day, etc. etc. etc. Until they've either run down the inventory or built up the market share, depending on their motivation here.

Phew, finally someone in this thread who understands consumer goods marketing concepts. I was getting worried...

I disagree on this point, at least in part. Historically, price reduction has rarely catapulted any product above the competition. The bargain illusion you speak of does not produce a long lasting effect, if it works at all even in the short term. At biz school (and in product management practice), they usually teach that if you want to distinguish your product based on price, you need to do it from day 1. Yes, I agree that setting the same price as the iPad creates the illusion of equivalent value. But price reduction after the launch only highlights the fact the product is a loser. A short term price reduction has a beneficial effect only if the product was selling reasonably well to begin with. In that scenario, the discount increases demand in the short term and may hopefully limit supply, moving the product to a different point in the supply-demand relationship that might last. But there is no evidence the TouchPad is selling well enough for this tactic to be effective. And HP is too savvy to do this sort of thing haphazardly.

First off you have to consider that in most markets periodic price reduction as a strategy is universal. FMCGs, apparel even food you will see either seasonal sales, temporary price reductions or BOGOFFs. If none of these tactics worked then they'd be far rarer, the reason that they rarely give a significant advantage to one brand or another is that EVERYBODY is doing them, not because they are ineffective. The idea that this has been proven not to work is risible, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever etc clearly demonstrate that they don't agree. If you don't believe me then walk through a local supermarket and count all the products on temporary sale.

Computers and handsets are unusual because they have very low margins and a strong secular deflationary trend so people don't necessarily expect a 'sale', and those firms like Dell that do use sales do so mostly to try to balance their inventory mix. But that's not the model tablets are operating in as yet.

Unlike computers or handsets, tablets are not currently a device that people need, and so marketing one as a value proposition would be self defeating. Tablets are a luxury item, and any that is sold without being marketed as such is doomed to fail. Price reductions needn't indicate failure, remember the first iPhone? To us in the tech world the Touchpad is clearly in trouble, but consumers may not necessarily perceive that.

As a new category with a dominant market leader tablets present different challenges than entering an established market. If Touchpad launched at $300 then many consumers would still adopt a 'wait and see' approach, they'd wait till their friends got one, or till they saw more reviews, or till they decided definitely not to buy an iPad. However a time limited offer can motivate people to buy early, in a way that a permanent low price might not.

Finally in technology there is tremendous downward pressure on price. One cannot launch a tablet at $300 and subsequently raise prices to $500, people simply won't pay more for a product that has been established as being in the value segment. HP would permanently destroy any chance of future profitability in tablets if they took that route. Discounting, even deep discounting doesn't necessarily have that effect - which is why Apple could for years give away free iPod Touches inthe 'back to school' without degrading the brand.

I don't necessarily agree with this. At the $500 price point a typical consumer is going to be more discerning than, say, for a $50 item.

Most discerning consumers realize that a bargain is a quality/desirable product at a good (lower than expected) price.

A product that is of poor quality and desirability is not a bargain at any price!

It depends on the product. A person paying $500 for a pair of jeans is going to be far more discerning than a person paying $500 for a car.

People pay $500 dollars for a dell laptop without ever using one or seeing the screen, which by my standards would make them very undiscerning consumers.

The reviews of the Touchpad don't make it seem like a fundamentally poor device in the way that the 7inch galaxy tab is or worse, the playbook. Actually, assuming the OTA update has solved the biggest issues, the Touchpad seems to be superior to the honeycomb tablets too. Inferior to the iPad doesn't mean totally undesirable. When most every tablet is being sold at $500, a $500->$300 reduction is likely to be perceived by many as a bargain. If the entry price had been a Xoom-like $800 then the reduction would not get traction, but the initial price was at least in a plausible ballpark.

I am running the latest Safari and Lion.

I use a Magic Mouse.

With Safari only, I get the following oddball cursor:



Does anybody know what it means and how to get rid of it?

Don't click on the link, folks, until Galactico explains what it's for...

[ it appears that I'm not allowed to report this post as spam ]

It does depend on the product.

I think in today's market a tablet is considered a luxury or optional purchase rather than a commodity or necessity.

The purchase of the $500 pair of jeans would seem to be more akin to the purchase of a tablet.

The $500 car is a necessary purchase -- basic transportation (with known/expected problems) at the lowest possible price.

The $500 laptop is a commodity -- does the work of computer at the lowest price.


I believe that most buyers would consider the car and the laptop as expendable -- not so the jeans or tablet.

I do not believe that the TouchPad has established itself as a product worth $500.

By reducing the price 20% (however temporarily) it is attempting to establish itself as a product worth $400.

The fact that some resellers will match the manufacturer's 20% reduction further reduces the perceived value of the product.

Let's see Until a few weeks ago, you had to wait 3-5 business days to get a $500 iPad -- because the demand was so high.

HP began shipping the Touchpad of [supposed] equal value 2 months ago.

Now, you can get the TouchPad for 40% less -- it does less, it is heavier and slower...


What is the perceived value of the TouchPad? $500? $400? $300? $0?


If the TouchPad had been 1st to market, trying to create a demand for a new category -- a price reduction may have spurred adoption.

As it is, HP has started the race to the bottom and I suspect that most other manufacturers will follow.

Once you sell on price alone, you have no where to go but down!


Apple, OTOH, has great flexibility -- they can release more expensive and/or less expensive tablets (reduce the price on the older model) without damaging the perceived value of their current or new products.

Don't worry, the link is absolutely spam.