It looks like HP’s TouchPad is not the only tablet to face a challenging market.
Best Buy has placed RIM’s PlayBook on sale, discounting the 64GB model by $150, while the 16GB and 32GB versions have been marked down by $50.
“Research In Motion’s PlayBook has had something of a rough ride since its launch in April this year,” reports Digital Trends. “Reviews have been mixed, while just a month after appearing on shelves, almost 1,000 of the tablets had to be recalled due to unspecified faulty hardware issues.”
Additionally, Sprint announced last month that it was dropping its plan to bring the 4G PlayBook to its network, leaving the device without a major U.S. carrier.
ReadWriteWeb journalist Dan Rowinski posted an interesting op-ed piece this week: “HP’s $99 TouchPad Fire Sale Can Teach Everybody A Lesson.”
“Tablets priced at $99 flying off the shelves and what had been a significant headline on Tuesday (Best Buy has 250,000 unsold TouchPads) had completely turned around on Sunday (Good Luck Finding a $99 TouchPad),” writes Rowinski. “It got me to thinking. As much as consumers love their Apple products and the iPad is a terrific device, consumers want something that is price efficient, even if it is a touch flawed. With literally hundreds of thousands of TouchPads sold over the weekend, a significant note should be playing in retailers’ and manufacturers’ heads — opportunities await for those willing to make a sacrifice.”
Rowinski speculates that an iPad killer is not in our immediate future. He also suggests that major changes are in the making with the browser-based mobile apps enabled by HTML5. He discusses tablets by Motorola, Samsung, HTC and Research In Motion and how price point may become as significant a factor as available apps. He addresses how Amazon learned valuable lessons with its Kindle and could possibly “recreate the Kindle furor by introducing a tablet into the market at $200 or less.”
“The great equalizer will be price,” writes Rowinski. “Amazon and to a certain extent Microsoft with Windows 8 have actually benefited from waiting to enter the tablet wars. They now see the battlefield in front of them and what it will take to make an impact. Quality devices with reasonable prices. Then turn and make money through value-added services.”
HP has decided to end its recently launched TouchPad tablet and will take a $100 million loss on unsold inventory. (Interestingly, tech columnist Andy Ihnatko was getting ready to write a mixed but generally positive review of the TouchPad for the Chicago Sun-Times.)
Additionally, on the heels of the company announcing it would be integrating its webOS with smart appliances and other devices, HP now says there will be no more webOS phones. It did apparently leave the option open to licensing webOS to third parties.
In related news, AllThingsD reports that HP’s recent decision to stop the development of its webOS puts it’s personal computer business in a perilous position, and rumors are spreading as to what the company’s next step will be.
The most likely option involves a spin-off PC business as a separate company, much like Motorola did at the beginning of the year.
If HP decides to sell instead, it is likely that an Asian company will step forward to make the purchase — and the front-runner seems to be Samsung. The predicted price if a sale were to occur is placed at around $20 billion.
Despite the TouchPad’s dismal retail performance, HP is forging ahead with webOS.
HP is in talks to license webOS for use in smart appliances, cars, gadgets “and just about anything else that has a screen,” reports Digital Trends.
The company is taking a similar stance to that of Google with Android in terms of integrating the OS in smart appliances and other devices. HP plans to integrate webOS into all of its computers by next year.
“I happen to believe that webOS is a uniquely outstanding operating system,” said HP CEO Leo Apotheker during the D9 conference. “It’s not correct to believe that it should only be on HP devices. There are all kinds of other people who want to make whatever kind of hardware they make and would like to connect them to the Internet.”
“We are fans of webOS,” explains Digital Trends, “but if HP hopes to expand the platform, it will have to deal with the performance issues we’ve seen on the TouchPad and Palm Pre devices and work to drum up more interest from the developer community.”
You’re probably tired of reading about it, but as the tablet wars continue it seems little traction can be made against Apple’s market leader. The Wall Street Journal offers the latest look at the iPad’s impact.
HP announced it will lower its price on the TouchPad by 20 percent, only a month after the tablet hit the shelves. Motorola cut the price of its Xoom tablet following the February launch and offered a cheaper model, with little response.
Samsung has stopped reporting how many Galaxy Tabs they are shipping — and is now stuck in a patent dispute with Apple that threatens its European sales.
Motorola and RIM don’t say how many tablets they have sold and, as recently reported on ETCentric, RIM’s PlayBook is in carrier trouble since Sprint Nextel pulled its support.
Meanwhile, Apple has sold some 28.7 million iPads since April 2010. According to WSJ, Apple “says it is having difficulty keeping up with demand and selling every iPad it can manufacture. Five months after its release, its iPad 2 can be hard to find in retail stores. The company said it shipped 9.3 million iPads in the June-ended quarter.”
Despite price changes, many consumers seem to view the iPad as the tablet leader and others as imitators. As a result, the tablet market is essentially divided into two sectors at this point — Apple’s iPad…and everyone else.
Do any of our readers have a different take on this trend? Does anyone recommend using a tablet other than the iPad?
HP unveiled a new 4G version of its TouchPad tablet on Amazon this week.
The tablet features a faster 1.5 Ghz processor, an updated webOS, 32GB of memory, 4G and Wi-Fi capabilities, and a 9.7-inch LED touchscreen.
It retails for $699 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com (although the listing does not include a release date).
According to PCMag: “Over the weekend, HP offered a $100 discount on the TouchPad, as did retailer Staples, allowing users to get as much as $200 off the tablet. It’s not clear if that was the original intent, however. Staples said rather cryptically that the coupons ‘were meant for different audiences,’ and did not respond to follow-up questions.”
Hewlett-Packard will start selling its new TouchPad on Friday, entering the tablet market currently dominated by the iPad 2.
The new tablet, starting at $500, features a 10-inch screen with “a slick, distinctive software interface.”
Walt Mossberg likes TouchPad’s UI but downgrades it for poor battery life, a small number of apps, and an operating system that is buggy and requires regular rebooting.
The TouchPad will initially be available in two versions (16 or 32 gigabytes of storage) and will only offer Wi-Fi connectivity.
Mossberg: “At least for now, I can’t recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2.”
Add another new tablet to the growing list of available devices… Toshiba began taking pre-orders last week for its 10.1-inch Thrive Tablet, expected to hit retail shelves in early July.
The $430 Wi-Fi-only 8GB tablet runs on Android 3.1 Honeycomb and is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip.
PC Magazine reports there will also be 16GB ($480) and 32GB ($580) models available.
Inputs include: USB 2.0, Mini USB, HDMI and SD Card.
Features include: Multitouch 1280×800 LED display, front and rear cameras and a replaceable battery.
According to a PC World review this week, interoperability may be what makes the Thrive stand out from the pack: “The Thrive is the first Honeycomb tablet to include a full-size SD Card slot. None of this microSD card nonsense for Toshiba; ditto for only having a micro- or mini-USB port. By including the SD Card slot and USB port, the company recognizes the need for interoperability among devices. And only with interoperability can a tablet begin to replace a laptop in your arsenal.”
In related news, Hewlett-Packard also recently announced its first media tablet, the 9.7-inch webOS-powered TouchPad. The Wi-Fi-only TouchPad is priced at $500 (16GB) and $600 (32GB).
