Did any of you get in on the Touchpad frenzy?

[Courtesy Flush]

In case you missed it, the $500 tablet device was reduced to $99 this weekend, after HP announced they were discontinuing it. It's a new device, just released in July, and despite the fact that it seemed to be named after two of Apple's products, it just couldn't compete with the iPad, so they were dumping them on the market.

HP's website froze Saturday from the flood of traffic, and so did many retailers sites. Sunday morning I managed to complete a transaction but I don't think it really took, because I never got a confirmation email and the order number was not valid (I called to confirm). This morning I saw an announcement that Barnes and Noble had just marked their supply down, and this time the order seemed to go through (so maybe now I'll have two?). I'll believe it when it actually arrives at my door.

What I'm wondering is: Will this flood of cheap tablets kill the market for other brands? Apple seems to be bulletproof, but with tens of thousands of new tablets in customers' hands, who would spend $500 for one now?

[Chan790]

1. I didn't but this raises an interesting thought.

One of the tactics frequently used in the video game industry is to sell units for a loss in order to boost the number of consoles they have in the marketplace, then make the money back on software.

What if this had the same net effect...not only killing the iPad market but making secondary software sales a profitable business line for HP...enough so that they had to course-reverse rather than abandon a key market-driver for them. It could change the way tablets, cell-phones and computers are sold going forward.

[blogslut]

2. However

...the iPad and the Touchpad have completely different operating system software. If you want to run apps intended for iOS (Apple), you have to istall apps intended for that operating system. If you want to run apps intended for webOS (HP) then you need to look for apps that were written to run on Linux.

For example, while I can jailbreak my iPod Touch and run third-party apps, those apps still need to be written for the iOS. The only way I can run Linux apps is to jailbreak the device, wipe it clean and then root a Linux-based operating system onto it.

[blueknight]

3. i have both

the apple ipad, and just got the new samsung galaxy tab 10. the samsung is much better in my opinion

[Chan790]

4. No, that was my entire point.

That the low sell-point for the Touchpad might kill iOS by making it more worthwhile to write code and software for the Linux-based system if the number of Touchpad units in the marketplace explodes past iPad...third-party software designers will always write first and best for the biggest marketplace when those marketplaces are exclusive to each other.

There was a long period of time where Apple was expected to die out because PC had a unit-dominance and nobody was writing software for Mac OS except as ports and afterthought. Nintendo was saved by the uniqueness of the Wii. Sega folded its' console business not because its' platforms were inferior but because PSX outsold them 10-1, just as Nintendo's 8-bit system crushed Atari out of a market that Atari had dominated almost from the get-go.

[blogslut]

5. Thank you for expounding

I thought from your first comment that your assumption was that all mobile apps were cross-platform.

I see what you're saying. I hope you're right but the road to a destination where developers favor writing apps for Linux over (or at least equally to) iOS is going to be a long one. In this realm, Apple got there first and "first" is hard to overcome. Take ADOBE products as an example. Several of their programs were adopted as industry standard over a decade ago and to this day their dominance is still strong. Mind you, most of those programs are good programs but I have to wonder, especially in the case of the portable document format (.pdf), do users really prefer them or are they just used to using them and hesitant to try new software?

[targetpractice]

6. HP is not flooding the market, they are exiting the market...

The $99 deal is a fire sale. Only 260,000 TouchPads were made, virtually none were sold... Apple sold 9.25 million iPads last quarter. So, HP conceded the tablet market to Apple.

Not only that, but HP is exiting the PC hardware business, too. One of their stated reasons is that the iPad is affecting their PC business, too.

[MorningGlow]

7. Early Saturday evening

Mr. MG saw dozens of them at Best Buy. Even though I have said I don't want a tablet or e-reader, he said I couldn't go wrong for $99 even with no tech support. (He already has a Kindle, or he would have gotten one for himself.) I said okay, so after we ate dinner across the street, he went back to get me one. All of 'em GONE. We suspect one person bought 'em all up at once. Now they're all on eBay for around $300.

Oh well. No big loss, I think.

[Courtesy Flush]

8. Office Depot's site now sows them available for $129

http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/tablets/cbxRefine=302157&N=5+518426/?hijack=hp+touchpad&type=Search

[MorningGlow]

9. Not anymore!

:rofl: