$100 tablet from HP ! It sounds off the planet i know and to be honest it is, HP have gone completely mad and killed off WebOS the operating system they acquired last year when they spent billions on the trouble struck company PALM. Not only does this mean no more phones under the ‘Pre’ banner but it also means the lovely HP Touchpad tablet is now discontinued and since they only sold a few thousand of the quarter million units manufactured its time for HP to go nuts and sell them off for less than $100…
Best Buy US above show the Touchpad 16 gig model as out of stock for online purchase but apparently you can go to your local store and buy one per customer at this once in a lifetime price.
The HP Touchpad may not have been a success at a price equal to that of the iPad but at this price its become an overnight hit with every tech head on the planet scrambling to get one and this does make me wonder why they didnt just sell them off for about $200 each as im pretty sure the same mad rush would have followed – not that im complaining, i want a slice of this silly price pad too !
As i said i would like to buy my $100 HP too but you see in the UK my local stores dont seem to have been told the news by HP and as such are still pushing out the Touchpad at £350 for the 16 gig version ( $580 ) and to be honest im not about to spend six times more than the US does for the very same device.
So Best buy UK not quite the same bargain seller as Best Buy in the US ! – Looking a bit deeper into this you can imagine some of the Android tablet manufacturers are a little bit upset by this price hacking – after all if your average guy walks into a shop looking to buy a media tablet and he has no special affiliation to Android or Apple or HP its likely he might think the HP Tablet is just the thing and he would be totally correct for thinking that since its well built and does all the stuff most tablet users want. It wouldnt surprise me at all if Apple had purchased HP just to do this and play a little war game with android !
So whats up at HP ? well whatever is going on they have certainly gone off the rails, in other news there is talk that they are to stop building PCs too very soon, that must be a direct hit from Apples success with the Mac and the shifting focus of domestic users on to devices like smartfones and tablets. So the mighty HP are no longer mighty at all and the descision to kill off WebOS leaves me thinking they have no idea at all what they are doing – i mean yeah sure kill of one product like this but only for the right reason, like re-releasing a budget version without touchstone technology and lacking the DRE speakers, yep the world does want a WebOS tablet and they want it to be much cheaper than the iPAD so come on HP you did it with Netbooks so why not do the same with Tablets ?
Clicking the link on HPs UK site takes you to a ‘not found item’ web page, may be this could be a sign that the UK will soon also be able to buy the touchpad at a much reduced price. For now if your like me you will be scrolling thru pages of Ebay sellers looking for a Us seller who wants to cash in on the deal, if someone in the US buys a $100 touchpad and sells it for $200 on Ebay the buyer in UK still gets a cracking deal and everyones happy .. sound like a plan ?
