Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/best-buy-wants-to-give-up-on-hp-touchpad-has-sold-fewer-than-25000-units.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

by redial • 15 years ago

57 67 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

canistr4• 15 years ago

If the TouchPad, with all its geek cred, is only able to move 25,000 units, then it really makes me wonder how well the other tablets are doing. I went to Best Buy (note: this is Canada) the other day and they had a huge number of tablets in their tablet section. The TouchPad, Xoom, Acer's Iconia, the Galaxy Tab, and various Windows 7-based tablets. If the TouchPad has only been able to move that many units, then there's no way that Best Buy can be happy with any of its other customers. While I see a lot of people playing around with the tablets, very few people are buying them regardless of brand (Apple excluded, obviously).

mgkimsal7• 15 years ago

I'd loved to have played with some of them at my local store, but as is the case with almost most consumer PC stuff, the units are not on.

The Apple display section at our local Best Buys are always loaded with functioning units that are open for people to explore - not locked down with crappy "BUY GEEK SQUAD SERVICE!" screen savers.

The table with all the tablets at multiple Best Buy stores I've been in to recently are all filled with multiple tablets that are just sitting there with black screens. Not plugged in, not running on batteries, not in demo mode. Just... sitting there.

If Best Buy sold TVs like they sell tablets, they'd have 3 LG units running full color shows in HD with surround sound, and 85 empty screens just hanging on the wall, then they'd be sending all the TVs back to Vizio, Mitsubishi, Sony, etc, complaining that they're not selling.

canistr4• 15 years ago

Agreed. It's the same thing with the way they sell laptops or phones. Why leave dumb units lying around? Why would anyone ever buy a device that they haven't tried? Best Buy (as well as other stores) need to have well-functioning devices turned on and available for customers to try.

Additionally, they need their employees to go around and reset the devices to ensure a proper functioning system instead of the ones bogged down by apps/content downloaded by random kids onto the device.

protomyth• 15 years ago

Everything you said is dead on, and makes me cringe when I think about the past. In the 90's and early 00's, the same would have been true of the Macintosh computers at the big box stores. Perhaps HP needs to put the same effort they put in promoting their PC line into their WebOS line. Microsoft's marketing and placement dollars are not available for their current endeavors.

gamble• 15 years ago

You gotta pay to play.

Retailers always demand a fee from the manufacturer before they provide special displays like the Apple section at BB. The contract likely specifies that BB employees will keep Apple's products charged up and functional at all times. This is only possible because Apple's products command high margins that can easily cover the marketing fees.

Apple's tablet competitors obviously don't have that level of relationship. I've yet to see so much as an end cap for an Android tablet.

vbone• 15 years ago

I think the numbers are suspect. And note that the source is anonymous so take things with a grain of salt.

j_col6• 15 years ago

Yep they are very suspect, and just so happen to be right on the verge of HP publishing their revenue figures, so may be some market shenanigans at play.

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

I guess we'll know if HP only talks about shipped unit and not sold, or activated, units.

abcd_f• 15 years ago

If tapping an icon on a home screen takes the tablet a fraction of a second just to provide visual feedback for that, I'm sorry, but this is simply not a good tablet. Not anymore, not with iPad in the picture.

j_col6• 15 years ago

If you apply the 3.0.2 patch (an over the air update), it resolves most of the performance issues with webOS on the tablet. Unfortunately all of the online reviews were done using 3.0, so the misconception that webOS on the Touchpad = slow has stuck.

mgkimsal7• 15 years ago

It's not a misconception. If I use webOS on a touchpad - as it comes out of the box - it's slow.

There were 'misconceptions' that Java was slow too. And Java was slow. And still is in some use cases. But somehow that's the fault of the user, not the technology?

huhtenberg• 15 years ago

I saw TouchPad at BestBuy last night and it was sluggish as hell. I don't really care if it had a patch applied or not. They had exactly one chance to make a great first impression and they failed. We can point finger at whoever, but what I saw pretty much explains why TouchPad did not gather interest with BestBuy buyers.

rsynnott• 15 years ago

This is why you don't release a broken product hoping to fix it later.

thwarted• 15 years ago

Is there something interesting in the comments to the original article? The link seems to take you right to the comments (at least on a mobile device), the actual arstechnia post is at:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/best-buy-wants-t...

j_col6• 15 years ago

Lots of discussion about this over on Precental.net about this today: http://www.precentral.net/hp-touchpad-selling-poorly-best-bu...

acabal• 15 years ago

I think the problem is that people still don't care about or want tablet computers; they care about and want iPads. All the companies jumping on the tablet bandwagon forgot what happened to 95% of the mp3 players that sprang up to compete with the iPod.

canistr4• 15 years ago

That's not really a 'problem' though if people understand what they want. What it really means is that HP needs to step up their game on all fronts to make a product and compel people to buy it.

I mean, I tried the TouchPad. It's good in a lot of ways but mediocre in other ways. It's a lot like how the G1 launched. Die-hards bought it, the tech-savvy liked it but weren't 'flocking' to it, and the average consumer just thought of it as another electronic device. HP needs something like a 'Droid' campaign to really spark interest in their products. You have to make it appear cool. Unfortunately, HP has never been able to do that and they're only just learning about the cool-factor with Beats by Dre.

recoiledsnake2• 15 years ago

>HP needs something like a 'Droid' campaign to really spark interest in their products.

I see a lot of Touchpad, Playbook and Xoom ads on TV. Atleast the Xoom ones seem to be on the level of the Droid ads(it's Motorola again, of course). The ads seem ok and cool but if the current sales figures are something to go by, don't seem to be very effective. As I said in another comment, it's easier to get people to buy a phone when their old ones gets too old or when the contract expires but it's hard to push people to a completely new kind of device where the use case is harder for the average consumer to see.

saturdaysaint• 15 years ago

A pretty significant piece of Android/Droid's success that you don't mention is that the Droid launched on the biggest U.S. network essentially without a competitor. If you wanted a phone with a decent browser on Verizon (and Sprint/TMo) in 2009/2010, it was Android or nothing. That's a luxury none of Apple's competitors have now.

recoiledsnake2• 15 years ago

Yes, the tablet market is very different from phones. Everyone needs a phone and when their contract expires, many of go to the carrier store and get the one they like, which in some cases, is the latest Android phone that people remember seeing in the Droid or Evo commercials on TV.

With tablets, it's very different, many people just don't see the need for one yet. While the iPad is shipping very well, much of that growth would be from iPhone and word-of-mouth publicity. Then there's the whole issue of apps and 3rd party support/corporate support.

While MS dissed tablets [1], with Windows 8 they're coming out with a strategy to make tablets of all flavors with a fresh UI, including x86 ones with backward compatibility. Let whether that can make a dent in the market.

[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/microsoft-exec-questions...

barista2• 15 years ago

Microsoft dissed tablets because they were not winning at it. Remember they were the first ones to bring tablets to the market. They screwed up on the form factor and the overall experience though.

dmix• 15 years ago

> people still don't care about or want tablet computers; they care about and want iPads

I've seen this many times when I try to explain to normal people what I do for a living. When I explain we create tablet apps, I get blank stares.

If I say we create iPad apps, they reply "oh I saw the commercial for those".

iPads are mainstream. Tablets in general, not so much.

Jabbles• 15 years ago

Couldn't that be a symptom of other tablets not being competitive, rather than the cause?

jneal• 15 years ago

I think they should take them back, don't get me wrong, but who's the sales manager for best buy that decided these would be a good buy, and that they could compete with the iPad in price when they can't even come close in quality or performance?

danilocampos• 15 years ago

In retail, these folks are called buyers.

Best Buy has plenty of long-term relationships with manufacturers. Any time you see fancy merchandising in the store, say an endcap with fancy graphics pimping the latest Whirlpool front loading washer, it's because the manufacturer has paid for that positioning.

So it's entirely possible that HP made a merchandising deal with Best Buy to promote their new product – and that the terms for the deal included some sort of buy back provision to mitigate the store's risk. Even absent such a provision, HP needs retail distribution channels for their business to work. It's in their interest to keep their partners happy and not leave them holding the bag on an experimental flop of a product.

harold• 15 years ago

I looked at the Touchpad at the local Best Buy. I was interested in buying one, but I was ultimately disappointed after using it for a bit. Unlike the iPad, which looks and feels like it was designed by a few people that might actually want to use it themselves, the TouchPad looks and feels like it was designed by committee.

commandar2• 15 years ago

I think the TouchPad is a cautionary tale that exemplifies something Apple does right:

Don't ship broken hardware.

I have a tech journalist friend who knew I was extremely interested in the TouchPad prior to launch, and let me play with his review unit for a bit. I was ready to drop $500 on one at launch, and walked away crushingly disappointed. The software clearly wasn't ready and with the product launch only a few days off, it was clear that HP was pushing this thing out the door too soon.

Here's the thing - I could tell that the problems were software-related and could be fixed by HP down the road. But HP went from a willing customer with $500 cash in hand, to one that two months later says "eh, maybe I'll pick one up if I catch one of those $350 sales." And I'm sure it's cost them sales since my tl;dr when people ask me about it is "absolutely brilliant interface, awful performance. I wouldn't buy one yet."

If HP had left the TouchPad in the incubator another couple of months and sorted out the performance issues before kicking the thing out the door, the reception would have been very different. I really, really wanted to like the TouchPad, and HP blew it.

You don't get do-overs on first impressions. Apple gets that. If the rest of their competition would figure this out and push out complete products rather than rush them out on an arbitrary time scale, Apple would be a bit less dominant than they are now.

mgkimsal7• 15 years ago

Amazingly, webOS/palm got a do-over, in the form of HP buying them.

"We're too small to compete" was the Palm motto towards the end, and HP buying them was seen by the faithful as a way of "getting it right" - more money and resources behind them, they'll be able to really get webOS out there.

And they did the exact same stuff they'd done two years earlier.

Announce and briefly demo a product at start of the year? Check

Delay getting SDK to developers? Check

Ship poor hardware with buggy software to retailers later than anticipated? Check

WHAT THE HELL? The entire webOS unit got a do-over, and still hosed it, with the budget/muscle of one of the largest companies behind it. Of course, that doesn't mean HP actually was really supporting it as much as people expected.

The TouchPad (and webOS stuff in general under HP) seems to have been treated about the same as every other model of HP laptop/desktop rollout they do. Just another SKU on the balance sheet, it'll be on the shelf for a few months, then retired and shifted to overseas support.

Amazingly infuriating to watch company after company claim to want to be a player in the mobile/tablet space, and fail continuously against Apple. It's far less that Apple's doing so much right, but everyone else keeps getting it so wrong, even with successful competitors to copy (this isn't revolutionary groundbreaking stuff any more, launching a tablet).

barista2• 15 years ago

Now sudddenly Nokia doesn't look too dumb right? Replace HP with nokia and webos with symbian and this could a story we'd be reading sometime in future.

Osiris• 15 years ago

I find it amazing that people haven't learned the Apple lesson yet. Apple is doing well specifically because it doesn't release a product until it's perfect. They put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of every device.

Why is it that companies like HP think that getting it out the door is more important that putting out a polished product? Just look at the white iPhone 4. Apple wouldn't release it until it was perfect, despite the fact that people were knocking down the door begging for it.

I've never owned an Apple product, but if I were going to get a tablet it would be an iPad. Everything else is just a cheap imitation and no one has proven to be anything other than that. I was really hoping the TouchPad would be the one device that could finally compete on polish and style with the iPad.

neild• 15 years ago

Amazingly infuriating to watch company after company claim to want to be a player in the mobile/tablet space, and fail continuously against Apple. It's far less that Apple's doing so much right, but everyone else keeps getting it so wrong, even with successful competitors to copy (this isn't revolutionary groundbreaking stuff any more, launching a tablet).

It isn't easy to make a successful tablet. Apple made it look easy, but it really isn't.

Apple came into the tablet market with:

- A core OS that's had over 20 years of work put into it.

- A touch UI layer with five years of development.

- A large developer ecosystem primed and ready to start making software for the new platform.

- A worldwide online software store with a gigantic existing customer base. (Do not estimate the difficulty of making it possible for developers anywhere in the world to sell software to customers anywhere in the world without forcing anyone to jump through the hoops of international tax law!)

- An online media store selling music, movies, and TV shows.

- A brand new ebook store.

- A worldwide network of physical stores to demo and sell the new devices.

You can't build that overnight. Apple has spent over a decade making smart decisions and putting themselves into the position where they are today.

NEPatriot• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, most big corporations still judge progress by scheduling and budgeting performance. Did we meet the schedule? Yes! Did we stay under budget? Yes! This is a paper victory.

Nobody asks "is the product ready to ship to customers?".

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

I don't know how everyone else here feels about it but I have yet to see a TouchPad commercial that makes me want one. I think Apple has done a lot of good for themselves in the way they advertise the iPad.

SwellJoe• 15 years ago

I played with a Nook Color at B&N a couple of days ago. If I were to buy a tablet, that's the one I'd buy. It's dirt cheap ($249), seems reasonably fast, and can be hacked into a real Android tablet (not a reasonable thing for a normal consumer to do, but it wouldn't be a problem for me). But, the things I could think of to use it for, I already have a Kindle and a Nexus One and a netbook for...so, I opted not to add more electronics crap to my very small house. Maybe the next generation Nook Color will convince me that a tablet is something I need/want.

My point is that the price of the HP was obviously wrong. It's not an Apple product...people don't expect to pay Apple prices. There's an assumption (right or wrong) that Apple imposes a stiff Apple tax on every product they sell, so I expect any non-Apple product to be much cheaper and have better specs. When that expectation is not met, I feel like the non-Apple product is over-priced. Apparently the TouchPad also sucks, while the iPad is apparently awesome, which makes the TouchPad an even harder sell.

orky56• 15 years ago

That's a really good case for the mindset of a hacker. Buy a cheaper product that is hackable and customize the experience. With the current tablet wars, iPad is winning since it doesn't require hacking to achieve a high standard of features, performance, and user experience. This aligns with mainstream customers which is the giant demographic every company is trying to obtain.

mortenjorck• 15 years ago

Shipping too soon and getting lukewarm reviews for it may have been a factor here, but I think the biggest one is in marketing: HP has never had a convincing story for the TouchPad.

The TouchPad campaign still has yet to make a solid case for choosing WebOS over iOS (or even Android). WebOS is a more flexible environment than iOS, and it's more consistent and seamless than Android; why can't HP marketing figure out how to vocalize that?

yequalsx• 15 years ago

The TouchPad didn't pass my two usability tests for tablets. I opened a book and tried to lookup the definition of a word. I think it was the TouchPad that opened a browser window and sent me to a Google search for the word's definition. I also opened two tabs for the browser. I couldn't figure out how to close a tab. If it doesn't pass these two simple tests then it's not worth buying.

The iPad is the only tablet that passes both tests in terms of performing the tasks easily.

j_col6• 15 years ago

Hmmm, the Touchpad doesn’t have tabs in its browser, it opens up a new browser card which is an entirely different experience, so I’m not sure how you could have carried out this test?

thought_alarm• 15 years ago

I think ten years from now we will look back at this time period and be baffled by the incredible amount and variety of complete junk that was dumped on the market to try and capitalize on the "tablet craze".

Sent from my iPad

joshu• 15 years ago

Cambrian explosion.

Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

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