Tag Archives | HP

HP Kills WebOS Hardware: There’s Even Less of a Tablet Market Than There Was Yesterday

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 18, 2011 at 2:29 pm

I’ll have lots more to say about the stunning news that HP is killing the TouchPad after two months and killing WebOS phones. But for now, how about some poignant quotes?

Me, in “HP Buys Palm: The Optimist’s View” (April 2010):

HP might be able to take WebOS places that Palm couldn’t. After the Foleo fiasco, Palm quite reasonably chose to stick to its smartphone knitting. As a much larger, more prosperous company, HP might reasonably decide to put WebOS on slates or set-top boxes or other devices that Palm would likely have avoided.

A Palm without a little cloud over its head is a good thing. With the era of uncertainty over the company’s viability over, retailers may be more excited about stocking Palm products, and consumers may be more confident about buying them.

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More Evidence That There’s No “Tablet Market”

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 17, 2011 at 3:15 pm

All Things Digital’s Arik Hesseldahl reports that sales of HP’s TouchPad at Best Buy aren’t great. In fact, his source says that Best Buy has managed to sell less than ten percent of the 270,000 TouchPads that HP has shipped to the retailer so far. It’s causing Best Buy some angst, Hesseldahl says.

HP’s rapid move to cut the TouchPad’s price apparently hasn’t goosed demand, at least sufficiently: according to an analyst Hesseldahl quotes, consumers think that the price might tumble even further. And so rather than buy a cheap TouchPad now, they’re waiting for even cheaper TouchPads that could be in the works.

I like competition and I like the TouchPad’s WebOS software, so I’m rooting for some incarnation of HP’s product to be a winner that sells well. But it’s not the least bit startling to see it get off to a slow start. The first reviews of the TouchPad–here’s mine–were pretty much unanimously lukewarm at best, pointing out bugs, performance issues, and a general lack of apps. Even if you were intrigued by the TouchPad, the reviews would leave you thinking that it made sense to wait rather than rush out and buy one.

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How a Thin 2011 Notebook is Like a Chunky 1970s Calculator

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 13, 2011 at 1:47 pm

PCWorld’s Jason Cross explains how the MacBook Air is like HP’s HP 35 calculator  from 1972, and why that’s bad news for today’s PC makers (HP included):

HP’s market research said they shouldn’t make and release it – it was going to cost at least $350. At twenty times the cost of a slide rule, nobody was going to buy it! Bill Hewlett said, “I don’t care, I want one of these things” and pushed the project through. It was so revolutionary, so visionary and transformative, that even at a cost of $350+ (that’s 1972 dollars!) the orders were over 10,000 a month.

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The TouchPad Price Break: Permanent!

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 11, 2011 at 9:39 am

That temporary sale that knocked $100 off the price of HP’s TouchPad? It’s no surprise that it turned into a price cut, period. The TouchPad now starts at $399, a hundred bucks less than an iPad. I wonder if it’ll boost sales enough to make the TouchPad the first clear hit in the tablet biz that isn’t from Apple?

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Suddenly, at Least Temporarily, the TouchPad is the Mythical Cheap iPad Alternative

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 5, 2011 at 11:43 am

First, HP introduced its TouchPad tablet at the same starting price as Apple’s iPad: $499. Then it introduced a $50 instant rebate, bringing the price down to $449. Then it announced a special $100 instant rebate this weekend, bringing the price down to $399.

And now WebOSRoundup says that Staples has a $100 coupon that you can use and still qualify for the instant rebate–letting you snag a 16GB TouchPad for $299, or a 40 percent discount off the original price.

That’s one way of answering the question “Why should anyone buy the HP TouchPad instead of the iPad”–give the TouchPad a much more aggressive price. The TouchPad may theoretically be going back to $499, but in the world of tech, there’s almost no such thing as once-in-a-lifetime deals: if a $299 TouchPad is available today, it probably means that all 16GB TouchPads will go for $299 sooner or later. Probably sooner. And while it might help move tablets, it presumably isn’t a sign that HP is thrilled with how well the TouchPad is selling at $499.

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HP’s TouchPad Gets a $100 Price Cut, This Weekend Only

Posted by Jared Newman on August 4, 2011 at 11:43 pm

Did Tuesday’s $50 price cut on the HP TouchPad strike you as ho-hum? Perhaps this weekend’s $100 price cut will do the trick.

The instant rebate will be in effect from August 5 through August 7 on HP’s website, PreCentral reports.

The TouchPad debuted to lukewarm reviews, partly because there aren’t a lot of tablet apps on HP’s WebOS platform, and partly because the software was buggy and slow. HP has improved its software through a subsequent update, but the app deficiency remains.

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Cisco and HP to Help China Build Surveillance System

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 5, 2011 at 10:06 am

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Cisco and China are involving in a Chinese project to install half a million surveillance cameras in the city of Chongqing. They’ll supposedly be used merely to help prevent crime, but the WSJ has a quote from HP’s Todd Bradley that’s kind of chilling: “It’s not my job to really understand what they’re going to use it for.”

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