back to article TouchPad sales doubled after it was discontinued

Hewlett-Packard doubled its fondleslab shipments after revealing plans to ditch them and more importantly gutting the price. Channel analyst Context says HP TouchPad flogged nearly 31,000 devices across the UK, Germany and France in August – twice the amount in July – after a very slow start to the month and confirmation mid- …

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  1. Gordon 10

    Acer?

    How the heck did acer get to no2?

    I've not exactly seen any glowing reviews is it just because they have both android and windows models?

    Wonder where Asus comes in the rankings?

    1. tmTM

      Because.....

      Acer sell a bunch of tablets below the £200 mark, in fact they do two below £100.

      Granted they're not 10 inch jobbies, and not that quick but it seems price not spec sells tablets best.

      1. MattWPBS

        Transformer I think...

        Transformer I think...

  2. Elmer Phud
    Boffin

    control?

    I have found out that a lot of people who got the things were happy to play with them once they were cheap.

    'Got rid of all the HP stuff and it works well' and 'I just freed it up, does what I want now'

  3. King Edward I
    Go

    I bought one...

    Havn't looked back - amazing piece of kit, and I love WebOs. What I think this proves is that tablets will take off, when price/performace reaches the level that the at-a-loss touchpad reached. At the moment they're a preimium device, when they become a commodity, things will change.

  4. Joe Montana
    FAIL

    A dud?

    I bought a touchpad in the recent fire sale...

    I wouldn't say it was a dud, but it was certainly overpriced given that its a newcomer to a market dominated by Apple... Had the touchpad been cheap from the start, not as cheap as it ended up but somewhere in between it could have sold reasonably well, and higher sales would have translated into developer interest and thus more apps.

    The hardware itself is perfectly decent, and WebOS seems fine... From a geek perspective its also the easiest tablet OS to get a root shell on.

    HP should have sold it not at a loss, but at a break even price in order to establish a place in the market, and provided incentives for developers to port their applications. Given that the touchpad runs linux, it could also have been made easier to port or directly run android applications.

    It seems that Motorola are following suit, the price of the Xoom seems to be dropping every day lately... I would buy one, but with the frequent price drops i don't want to run the risk of buying it today and it costing half as much tomorrow.

  5. Erroneous Howard

    A title is optional?

    If staff are going to get "first dibs" on these devices coming into the UK then there should be measures in place to discourage reselling.

    1. Grivas Bo Diddly Harm
      Meh

      @Erroneous Howard

      Why discourage reselling? Poor sods will probably be out of a job soon the way the company is being mismanaged; let them make a few bob from HP while they can.

      You could even call it market research - something the HP marketeers or bean counters have obviously not troubled themselves with (a bit 20th century, don't you know) - establishing the optimum price beyond which the general public aren't prepared to buy one.

      If HP had done that themselves, they might not now be covered in cack.

  6. jason 7
    Stop

    Doesnt need to be fast or expensive....

    ...for the main living room use in our household.

    The main use is "Ohhh where have we seen him or her before? Quick, load up IMDB..."

    I'm sure many such instances are similar if honest.

    1. BorkedAgain
      Thumb Up

      Spooky...

      I've been doing that a lot since my fondleslab took up residence on the coffee table...

      1. 100113.1537
        Thumb Up

        Absolutely - coffee-table browsing is major use!

        Have an el-cheapo e-book reader (Kobo, I think) that we use for the same stuff - IMDB is probably the home page! Why spend $4-500 when you can get most of the same functionality for $100.

        Still wish I'd been able to snaffle a TouchPad for that price - I was hoping to use my old Palm applications on WebOS, but $500 was way too much. I can still get a (boxed) Tungsten E2 on EBay for about $250.

  7. ratfox

    So they divided the price by three, and shipped only twice more? Hmm...

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      FAIL

      Well, yes, but given that most of the major retailers' web sites collapsed under the strain, and most potential purchasers failed to get one, they could have sold lots more.

      GJC

  8. Paul Bruneau

    It's just supply and demand

    I keep saying this, but it bothers me every time, so I keep saying it:

    > "The flash sale created a huge surge in demand," said Salman Chaudhry

    The sale did not probably CREATE that much demand.

    The demand for a $99 tablet is already in place, but usually there is zero supply at that price level, so we see zero sales.

    When they lowered the price, demand wasn't CREATED. Rather, existing demand was MET.

    Now that the product is gone, there is still a high demand for a decent tablet for $99, so when the next copycat company gives up and decides to cut their price, again, demand won't be CREATED, it will be MET.

  9. Slipgate

    Price vs. performance?

    Surely it's all about meeting users' expectations i.e. working well as designed/intended. The iPad has done it, sold millions, even at a premimum price point. I guess it's like the old adage, 'You get what you pay for...'

  10. E net

    Not Necessarily

    >The demand for a $99 tablet is already in place, but usually there is zero supply at that price level, so we see zero sales.When they lowered the price, demand wasn't CREATED. Rather, existing demand was MET.<

    Not necessarily! I recently "tried" to buy a game that I only had passing interest in because of two reasons. 1. The buzz surrounding it. 2.The 1st day price drop made it worth trying.If I liked it then it was a great buy. If I didn't then it didn't matter as the price point meant that I still got good value out of it.

  11. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    At $25?

    Since quartering the price doubles the sales they should be reducing the price of the next stock to $25 - I think they may have found a new business model here (*).

    * - although possibly one entitled:- who can go bust fastest

  12. David Hicks
    Holmes

    Well duh

    Lots of people look at tablets and think "Oooh, shiny". I include myself in this. What they don't think is "Oooh, shiny, and worth 500 quid" because they don't (yet?) see them as an essential piece of kit.

    Drop the price of what seems like a quality tablet into the impulse purchase zone and of course you're going to get sales.

  13. Christian Berger

    Same goes for the N900

    After Nokia killed their line of smartphones, the priced for the N900 soared.

  14. Sarah Davis
    Coat

    scum uncovered

    one thing this did show was how many dodgy retailers there are out there. Taking money from a customer for a product you don't know if you have in stock / you don't have in stock / you cannot guarantee when it will be in stock should be illegal, and is a something only the most untrustworthy/dodgy sellers & shops practice!

  15. Rob
    Go

    Just had a phone call from CPW

    Probably regret mentioning this, but I also doubt my chances of getting down to a CPW shop in time so doesn't really matter.

    My local shop phoned to let me know that the 'Large' CPW shops are expecting very limited stock in the next couple of days (count that as from the date of this post).

    I'll be phoning my nearest 'Large' store first thing tomorrow morning to see what they say (they will all probably be knobbled by the staff, I bet).

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