Sunday, August 21, 2011

WebOS Not So Unpopular as HP Thought

So it turns out today, HP's Touchpad, which runs on Palm's WebOS, went on fire sale price of $99 for 16 gb and $149 for 32 gb. What happened? HP website and every major retailers are posting that they are out of stock of HP's Touchpad. It turns out that there was a demand for the "dead" Palm's WebOS operating system. Although Apple's iPad is ruling the tablet world right now, this apparently shows that there is demand for other tablets if they are priced right. It's an amazing testament that the demand for a discontinued product was so high that Touchpad sold out in less than 24 hours pretty much everywhere you go. But maybe the demand would still be there if the Touchpad was placed at $200-300 range initially, and HP kept making them. It seems that people who either (1) want alternative to Apple's iPad or (2) can't afford to pay $500 for a tablet would be willing to buy an alternative.

It's a shame that HP couldn't see that before deciding to kill Touchpad altogether. Maybe today's result may lead to change in HP's thinking... or, more likely, it may lead to change in the rest of the tablet makers if they want to gain an edge over Apple's iPad.

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