HP eats $100 million charge to cover unsold stockpile of TouchPads - Page 2

does HP sell the slate? I saw an ad on this page and when I clicked it there it was, for $799
I thought this got killed a long time ago?

hp.com/slate

For $99, I would buy two. One for the couch and one for the throne. Just using it as a web browser and an ebook reader would justify the purchase price at that level. Not to mention the other functionality it has, with a fair amount of existing apps. Is there a good mapping program? Combined with a 3G dongle, it would make a great "GPS" for the car, cheaper than the dedicated devices with a bigger screen.

I'd snap them up. Even ardent iPad fans should consider them at that price, to take them into hazardous environments like the beach to read books. At that price, it is cheaper and better than a Nook. At that price, breaking it or losing it or having it stolen would be no heartbreak, unlike an $829 iPad.

Buying commodities at record high prices is questionable as an investment. Usually professional investors buy when prices are low, and they sell to folks like you when prices are high. Too often amateurs buy when the prices are high, get discouraged when prices go down, and sell to the professionals at a huge loss. 'Twas ever thus.



Edit: Not sure if you were sarcastic.

I can't. I'd buy one in a heartbeat - maybe 2. One would be for my daughter when we're traveling so she doesn't bug me to use my iPad. The Touchpad would be OK to watch movies or read books - and is certainly OK for internet access when we're in a WiFi zone.


It's not going to be free - and the article's math is wrong.

HP only has to write them down to fair market value. These things would sell well enough at $200 apiece, especially with Christmas coming up. I would imagine HP would offer Best Buy and others a $200 credit for each. That means that there are probably more like 500,000 units out there to be credited, not 260,000. If HP is only knocking $100 off per unit, then there are a million units out there.

A lot depends on whether they saw an uptick in sales after reducing the price to $400. If so, dropping to $300 might be enough. If there was little or no increase, then it might be necessary to go to $200 or less.

The 260,000 number is clearly bogus. Best Buy alone has 240,000 excess units.

I think WebOS was a good effort. It had a lot of great features even thought Palm (and now HP) have completely fraked its management. What I don't get is why people are so against Chrome OS for being an OS that uses webcode for the UI but okay with a web code UI for WebOS.

Truer words couldnt be spoken. In Sept 2009.. thanks to a 25% cashback reward offer from Bing.. I bought a $649 HP DM3 13" laptop to replace my 1 year old $599 Acer laptop that had BOTH of its hinges break. You would have thought I had learned my lesson with 'cheap' laptops from what happened with my Acer. But nope, I just couldnt resist a $485 HP that "looked just like a Macbook". The HP had the Macbook style chicklet keyboard, brush aluminum lid, HDMI out and was advertised to have a 8 hour battery life. When I recieved it I was amazed, I couldnt believe the deal I had gotten.. it seemed like the best bargain ever.. I had a "Macbook" equal for less than $500 bucks. That was until I actually begin using the DM3. \\

First thing I noticed was it was pretty heavy for its size, it sucked to lug it around. Next was the heat, the heat coming from the laptop was so bad that you could not sit it on lap (your bare skin legs).. what good is a laptop you cant use on your lap? Because of the heat, the fans were also blaring loud 24/7. The fans ran at 2 settings.. LOUD and LOUDER. The worse was trying to watch a full screen video.. the fans were so loud you could not hear the damn audio coming from the video. You either had to hold the laptop up to your ear and watch the video sideways.. or use headphones. I take that back.. the worse was the actual touchpad. Who in the hell designed HP touchpads? Its like it fights your finger to move, there was so much friction. In order to get it to work properly I had to first wipe my fingertip on my forehead or nose to pick up some oils (no bullshyt) then use the touchpad as the oils from skin provided enough lubrication for the mouse cursor to move halfway decent. The battery never lasted 7 hours.. even with wifi off and the screen dimmed. There were plenty of times I flew on a plane and couldnt even watch an entire movie, because the battery wouldnt last.. not to mention scurring thru airports looking for a outlet to recharge my dead and thus useless laptop.

And those are just the hardware issues.. software wise Windows7 ran decently.. but was never what I would call snappy. And thanks to all the bloatware HP pre-loads on their computers, I had to go out and buy a $90 OEM Win7 disc just to run the 'standard' version of windows. After a couple of months of surfing the web the laptop had collected viruses & pop up spam. I loaded McAfee (which was provided free by my employer) but it still didnt stop the pop up spam. So I backed up, wiped the HDD clean and reinstalled Win7.

After going thru all that for about 9 months.. I had enough. I already owned a iPod Nano I bought in 2004. And a iPhone3GS purchased on launch day 2009. Both of those products performed wonderfully, were well built and most importantly JUST WORKED. I decided I would sell my HP DM3 and give the $1000 Macbook a try. Ended up getting the 13" CD2 Macbook Pro from Microcenter for $999 in July 2010 (thanks to a $200 instant rebate). Needless to say on an Apple forum.. that MBP turned out to be everything I ever wanted in a computer and more. It took a while for me to get used to OSX, but using bootcamp I also ran Windows on the computer. After a couple of months, I never used Windows again.. strictly OSX. The MBP did everything right. It was lightweight, it didnt get hot.. shyt it didnt even get warm. Rarely did you hear the fan, maybe twice in a year of ownership. The screen was bright, and the backlit keyboard was a dream to use in the dark or on a plane at night.. and best of all you could fully control the brightness (even turn each off individually it you wanted too). The touchpad & keyboard were both hands down the best I've ever used.. and Ive had about 10 different laptops in the past 10 years. The magsafe connector meant no more trips & falls or broken power connectors. The single jack for mic/headphone/SPDIF out was wellthought out and cool. OSX was another joy.. no viruses.. always snappy.. best of all whenever I closed the laptop it went to sleep. Open it and instantly OSX responds.. that had never happened so fast & consistent on any Windows laptop I've owned. The battery lasted a real world 8-9 hours. My headset from my iPhone also controlled the volume up and down on the Mac. When I say it did all the little things right. It did ALL of them right. This laptop wasnt worth a $1000.. it was literally priceless because I had finally stop wasting my time, money and frustration on laptops that just didnt work. This one did. As someone who works on a computer for 10-15 hours a day.. I would have paid $2000, maybe $3000 for this "just works" Macbook that travels well and has a long lasting battery.

My sister who was going thru the same issues with her 15" Toshiba laptop had used my MBP quite a few times and was always interested in giving Macs a chance, but simply couldnt afford one. So when the new 2011 Macbook Air was announced, I was first in line to get the 13" 256GB model.. and sold my sister my 2010 MBP for $600 bucks. She got a great deal considering 2010 MBP's still have a trade-in value of $800 on Amazon RIGHT NOW. For everything the MBP did great.. the new Air does it even better. I cannot say enough about how well Apple products work, look, feel and hold their value. Since I've bought my first Mac.. I've also bought Apple's Extreme router, AppleTV and the new iPad2. All of these devices work wonderfully together with no issues or diffulculties.

Sorry for the long pro-Apple rant. But I'm sure several people share my story and experiences. From the iPod to every Apple. With the easy-to-use & "it just works" appeal of their products.. its no wonder they have become not just the worlds largest consumer device manufacter. But are also the most successful company as a whole. I just read an article that states Apple has sold more computers in China than Lenovo.. which shows exactly how popular are worldwide!

WebOS is done. Game over.

Consumers just don't give a damn about it. They didn't care when Palm had it. They didn't care when HP had it. It's too late to get Joe Average to care about it when the iPad is setting the bar and getting all the attention.

Let's stop trying to resurrect failed operating systems. WebOS is good for ripping a few ideas from. That's about it, that's all it's good for: parts.

Statements like this prove you know nothing about Apple. Apple runs itself like a "Start Up" and it's only competition is Apple last year. I doubt they even notice the "competition."

Had Palm created a good emulator on WebOS to run the classic Palm OS applications, it would have been a much much different story.

But as far as I know, WebOS was essentially put together in a crash program after the update to Palm OS failed to materialize. So that oversight was understandable. Still, a monumental business screw up.

I really did expect HP to make at least a good 5 year committment to webOS. Kind of sad that they gave up so quickly. Perhaps if the PC business was better...

If some company does buy it, undoubtedly the first things they will do are make a few changes, change the name, and declare it a new OS. I think there will be a CEO with enough hubris to believe he/she can make it work (if they can buy it for cheap).

Sorry, but IMHO what you says is about needing competition is wrong. Apple doesn't need competition to innovate! They have no competition because they innovate and they compete with themselves to do better. They even allow their new products to kill existing ones if required (unlike any other company out there). To suggest copycat products keep them on their toes is farcical. Apple already have the next few iterations of products under development and testing probably a year or two out so suggesting copycats still a year or two behind have any impact on Apple's future plans is a joke.

Perhaps all the TouchPads will end up in the same landfill as all of those unsold Atari E.T. cartridges back in the 80's.

Seriously though, what happens to these roughly 1/4 million tablets now? Does HP have a fire sale, with "Buyer beware" written all over the receipt? (No future support, no future updates, etc) Do they end up on the grey market in some third world country? Or now that they've been "written off" are they truly as valuable to HP as those aforementioned E.T. cartridges of old?

There will be probably be some revenue from the sale of stock even though the hardware has been killed.... so I would say that it's more likely that there are 500,000 or more Touchpads in retailers hands. The $100 million would cover the cost of reducing these items to $99.99 or $49.99.

When has that ever happened? When HP beat the iPod with an HP-branded iPod? Or when HP successfully duplicated the style and packaging of the MacBook Air? I can't think of a single HP product that would even make Apple take notice.

I just don't get how you can keep stating something as arrantly and obviously silly as this. Apple has never needed some other competitor to do what they do. They focus on delivery not features. If you are a Dell or (used to be) HP where you are competing for share toe-to-toe with another PC maker, perhaps. Competition has NEVER fostered innovation. The most innovative companies in the world focus on innovation not competition. Apple has been deliverying for the last ten years in each market they have chosen to address - they are NOT like every other company - they came close under Spindler and Amelio, but the culture is not that of a mega-corporation and they categorically have ONE arguable monopoly (in the business sense) - iPods in the PMP market. That's it. I defy you to show where Apple is a monopolist - they are a fraction of the PC market (including tablets), they barely make enough software to make it generate profits, they are sharing the cellphone market with Android, RIM and Nokia..where do you get this monopolist meme from?

Samsung is already a formidable opponent - where have you been? Samsung Electronics - the subsidiary of Samsung Group (more on that in a minute) has nearly 200,000 employees, has (for 2010) revenues of 133.78 billion USD/net income of 13.67 billion USD and total assets of 118.35 billion USD. This is no lightweight corporation here. The Samsung Group is a multi-national conglomerate with nearly 300,000 employees, that produces electronics, mobile and smart phones, flash memory, hardrives, optical storage, ships and aircraft, chemicals, entertainment, financial products and retail operations, which bring in a whopping revenues of 205.9 billion USD/net income of 17.7 billion USD with total assets of 317.8 USD and total equity of 123.4 billion USD.

By contrast - if you can't parse this out for yourself - Apple has nearly 60,000 employees, and with their products produce (2010) Revenue of 65.23 billion USD/operating income of 18.39 billion USD/profits of 14.01 billion USD/total assets of 75.18 billion USD and total equity of 47.79 billion USD. Get it?


This is not some 98 lb weakling that Apple has decided to punch in the face - it is a MAJOR multi-national conglomerate. C'mon, do some homework - get informed.

If Samsung took WebOS and made it a success (or even make Bada a success) so it challenges the iPhone I'd expect Apple to use their patent portfolio against it. A smartphone/smartphoneOS is so complex there will be something in it that infringes on existing patents. The only reason no one has really looked at WebOS is it hasn't sold enough to make it worth the lawyers time.

Samsung doesn't need a new OS, they need protection from patents.

Normally I'd agree competition is necessary to continue innovation. But I'd agree that Apple has shown the ability to innovate and differ itself on its own. The iPod, iPhone and iPad are all the 1st generation devices that 'created' their product category and defined how that product category should look, feel operate. For the google fact police, I'm not saying they were absolute original idea.. I'm saying those products were the idea that caught on with the mainstream public. In the eyes of the consumer.. the iPod was the first mp3 player. The iPhone was the first touchscreen phone that was always internet connected and offered real custom apps. The iPad was (and still is) the first tablet people really stood in line to buy.

And people arent just buying these products to buy them, they are really using them.. everyday, all day. Look around.. you'll see people with an ipod, iphone or ipad all around you. Sure there are other choices, but realistically speaking all of these other choices are pretty much cheaper copies of what the ipod, iphone and ipad were all designed to do.

Apple is different from other tech companies in that FIRST they look for a need or strong want in their customers. They then design a device to meet that need or strong want. They dont just come up with an idea, throw it on a store shelf and see anybody will buy it. They also dont play the usual follow the low-cost leader race to the bottom that other tech companies do. They are one of the few tech companies that controls from start to finish.. both the hardware/software.. which guarantees the user experience will be easy, pleasant, reliable, well made and most importantly "just works".

The way their products are designed.. and the way the company thinks as a whole is pretty much the opposite of what everybody else is doing. So in the end does it really matter if "everybody else" is competiting with them or not.

HP neither had the name, brand image, nor the mindshare for it. What does the consumer associate with HP? Nothing too exciting.

HP is associated with the rest of the generic box-makers. It's a little too late to attempt differentiation at this stage unless you've absolutely nailed the same game Apple is playing, namely, vertical integration.

HP approached vertical integration like a total amateur. It's possibly worse than just half-assing it with a horizontal business model.

Black Berry and the Recently Acquired Google/Motorola Mobility are the only two I can see keeping their head above water with the iPad. HP TouchPad was good, but it was too little, too buggy and too late.

Given the 250,000 PlayBooks sold in the first Quarter, the expected 800k~900k sales over the year for the PlayBook, and the fact that galaxy 10.1 and Xoom are pretty much cropped out of the picture (lawsuits and shit, respectively ) my money is on RIM taking the #2 spot in the long run.

That is assuming the PlayBook is not next on Apple's hit list. After all it does very much look like a small iPad.

Unless RIM does some form of major overhaul to the Playbook it will die a quick death all on its own (even with the overhaul I don't give it much hope).

Apple does seem to have helped itself to the all you can sue buffet - but the Playbook looks nothing like the iPad to me (unless the colour black is patentable, of course ), has a completely original OS with a vastly different GUI and touch sensitive bezel + screen, therefore having a completely different form of navigation and interruption for many aspects of the system.

I love Apple and all that jazz, but if Apple sue RIM for patent infringement for trade dress or some kind of touch interface patent, I will find Mr Jobs and pimp slap him personally.

Thanks for that, Daekwan (I won't retype the long post, but look for it above, worth reading). I had the same experience about 10 years before and never looked back. I still use a Windows PC, but solely for running games.

Some forum posts seems to lament the failure of HP webOS to provide competition for Apple, but really, if Apple was driven solely by competition, they'd never have made the iPad. Everyone seems to take its success for granted, but remember just 18 months ago, opinion on the success of the iPad was divided between those that were ready to preorder one, and those who laughed at it's name and thought Apple would fail spectacularly. Now everyone is scrambling to build a tablet, down to calling it a "pad" (in the case of HP). Seriously, it's Apple that's providing competition in the industry, not the other way around. Companies like HP only know how follow and make it cheaper.

There's plenty of room in the Toilet Paper Aisle.

My thought on DOA tablet's: Make it $50 and not-that-hard to get kids-movies on it, and it can come along for long car rides. It doesn't need a touch-screen or even a fancy OS. A DVD-player level physical push-button O/S would be enough.

No one can compete with iOS, so don't. Go for the movie-player market:

16GB, 7"-9" old-tech screen, 3 hour battery-life, physical-button interface: $50. It doesn't have to be *that* thin, or *that* light, and no touchscreen.

Why doesn't one of these big guys go all-in on selling a 1-trick-pony movie player cheap for the car?

Portable DVD players still creep over $100 on Amazon. Really? And I have to bring the discs and battery life is awful?

A $50 movie playing tablet is worth having even if you have 2 iPhones, an iPad, and an iPod Touch. The youngest child in the car gets the cheap tablet. End of story.

ANYTHING over $50 for a DOA tablet and one should hold out for ANY iOS device. Used iPod Touch 2nd generation for $75 beats any $99 tablet, given the iOS ecosystem.

Am I crazy? Maybe the $50 is too low for 16GB, 7"-9" crapscreen ANYthing, even with endless engineering shortcuts.

HP chose to abandon thousands of Americans by moving their jobs overseas to "be more competitive." & then boast about it as a brilliant, strategic business decision, whilst still buying corporate jets, etc. Even if many of the jobs were blue collar, assembly & packaging, many good ideas come from loyal employees who, often in response to incentives, provide good ideas on ways to improve production, come up with new product lines, integration, etc. Some just veg all day, others think of ways to advance in the company, & others just think, & evaluate, & ponder how to make the company better, especially if they are given stock options, a vested interest in the outcome. The entire body of loyal, faithful, & motivated or potentially motivated thinking employees was flatly abandoned for cheap foreign labor, throwing away their 'think-tank' of potentially great ideas. If they didn't see their American employees as a think-tank, then that is a management problem, & if the think-tank wasn't on fire with passion of thinking of new & greater ideas, that's a management problem. They chased the dollar without a vision & purpose. Web OS seems like a great idea, & they should have made at least a 5yr commitment to it. For the HP loyal believers who paid full price for the touch pad, must feel betrayed & abandoned.

My first idea that comes to mind, is that they give away or sell the touch pad for $100, & make up the costs like the subsidized phones do, with a monthly subscription that is padded to cover the subsidy. Since its web os, the touch would need to connect, & wouldn't function as a stand alone device. So for instance, charge $30 a month for 2gig of data, which would include 3 $1.00 apps, & build an ongoing pipeline of new applications for the subscribers.

There are 2 ways a piece of technology works for collectors. 1.) It had some very fancy technology that pushed the bounds of technology as we know it and will be secretly mentioned 5 years from now. 2.) Limited production run, scarce, not 250,000 made 3.) it was the undoing of a giant company, thought to not be capable of failing.

I think if anything this baby is close to number 3, but it wont dump HP yet. So i highly doubt it would work as an electronic collectors item.

And it shows you know nothing about history. That doesn't surprise me as most of the commenters on here are a bunch of kids and blinkered Apple fanboys with no appreciation of the real world. Competition leads to innovation as opponents strive to stay one step ahead of each other. Without competition, bloat will set in, people will take their foot off the pedal. That's just human nature.

I hate to be contrarian, and I really have no love for Palm, webOS, Rubenstein, or HP, but in the back of my mind, there was another company that sold vertically integrated hardware/software system, failed spectacularly, spun off their hardware business, hung on to their operating system software attempting to get it onto other hardware, before finally coming home when Apple bought NeXT. And at its new adopted home, the software flourished. But it wasn't immediately obvious back in 1996 that the NeXT purchase would save Apple, as Apple was at it's lowest, weakest point back then (it's stock price hit below $10). Plus, the same "spun-off their hardware business" story could also apply to BeOS, which disappeared into history. Which one will be the webOS story?

I'd asked in another thread why Sony, Nokia or Nintendo couldn't pick up webOS and marry it to some interesting hardware, perhaps with an original twist instead of trying to slavishly copy the iPhone / iPad formula. All of the companies I listed have a history of success with proprietary platforms, and each have products that are vertically integrated. And each is down in the dumps because they're in need of something modern. Personally, I think Nokia could take webOS and make it work.

Agree. HP, like so many other would-be iPad cloners, can only react to models Apple has already shipped. They'll always be playing catch-up, always a year (or more) behind. Meanwhile, Apple is aggressively developing iPad. They've learned that complacency is a killer and they're moving ahead.

On the other hand, Palm never learned that lesson. They pioneered the PDA market, single-handedly created the "stylus era" of portable computing, and were the undisputed leader for many years. But then things started unraveling. The founders quit and formed Handspring. The company was bought by 3Com and split into hardware and software companies. The hardware division (palmOne) hedged its bets by shipping Windows Mobile versions of their products. The hardware branch then merged back together with Handspring, then merged back with the software company again.

Meanwhile, PalmOS stagnated. Palm OS 5.0 was first released in 2002, and only received minor updates from then up until the HP acquisition. (Palm OS 6.0 was released but failed to generate any interest from potential licensees.) The software company spun off from Palm (palmSource) sold Palm OS to ACCESS, then had to buy the right to modify Palm OS back from ACCESS without paying penalties. I could go on...

All of this wasteful legal maneuvering cost Palm dearly. Engineers quit, products weren't updated, profits plummeted, the stock value tanked, and Palm lost mindshare to its competitors. This all cost Palm years of development time, Palm OS began to show its age, and competition ramped up. Then iPhone was announced and the smartphone world changed forever.

In spring 2007, Jeff Hawkins, the founder of the original Palm Inc., announced a new concept in Palm hardware: Foleo. And it was cancelled three months later. Just before the netbook era. Foleo would have been one of the pioneers, it not *the* pioneer, of the netbook category if it had been produced. Didn't happen.

Palm's history since around the turn of the century has been full of "woulda, shoulda, coulda." It's a warning from the past.

A very insightful comment!

The one thing that you fail to mention is WHY Apple picked NeXT. Because it came with Steve Jobs. Plus even though Steve had a lot of anger toward how Apple treated him, he still wanted to come back to Apple. Apple was one of his children that was dying and he couldn't bare to watch and do nothing.
WebOS has no champion like that, and unfortunately it will probably go the same way as Be did.

HP would be smart to take advantage of Google buying Motorola. License WebOS to companies who don't want to compete with Google on hardware.

I also think HP really bungled the roll out of its products. It should have put WebOS as an alternative bootable OS on its computers. That would have gotten people used to it, and developers time to build applications for it.

I was surprised by this news. Of all the iPad competitors out there, HP seemed to have the most promise with WebOS.

If I saw one on sale for ultra cheap I'd probably pick one up, if only to Netflix.

Ultimately I think people are starting to recognize that you don't get the same experience and marriage of hardware/software that you get with iOS and Apple products. They can clone it all they want, but until they bring something new to the table they'll just be cheap (or not cheap) clones.

HP seems to be a classic example of what happens when the founders leave and the company moves into the stage of revolving door CEOs. Chasing short-term profits, wrangling of deals, mergers, and acquisitions, shuffling the org charts, and finally the CEO pulls their golden parachute and heads off to the next company.

It takes a lot of dedication to keep a corporation focused on producing good products for a good price, and keep the R&D pipe filled with future profitable products.

Once Steve J is gone, I hope Apple has a successor from the inside ready to take over to maintain Apple's personality, and I hope they can keep promoting from within for a long time. Once you pull in a mercenary CEO, it's over.

RIP HP.

- Jasen.

I recall that Steve didn't pitch NeXT to Apple; instead someone at Apple knew someone at NeXT and called them up one day, one thing lead to another. Apple was considering both NeXT and BeOS at the time, and I recall that NeXT was chosen because it was far more mature and complete an operating system at the time compared to BeOS, particularly in their TCP/IP (networking) stack. And yes, Jean-Louis Gassee was Be's evangelist and champion, and was personally connected to many in the Apple community, having been John Sculley's number 2 man for many years.

Wrong....you are definitely confused. The Philippines in not an extremely poor country. Haiti is an extremely poor country, with over 80% of the population in poverty. 25% may be in poverty, but the population is over 100 million people. I've been there many times and seen lots of developments and efforts to improve. So Manny wants to ban condoms and birth control, soooo what! He's Catholic and it's his belief. I don't agree with him, but it's his opinion. You probably didn't know he did lose an election, so he doesn't have all influence over all Filipinos. You probably don't know he is helping build a hospital for his home province. Using words like 'extremely, asshole and horrendously' show your ignorance and have no clue of the whole picture.

These other also-rans aren't Apple.

So this morning (Saturday) I walked into the same Costco and most of the tablet displays are gone completely - poof. The only one left was the Vizio.