Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/23/dear-hp-please-keep-making-those-touchpads/

by ayanb • 15 years ago

79 38 15 years ago

acabal• 15 years ago

I don't think people bought the TouchPads because they wanted a low-quality "couch surfing" device; they bought them because they knew it was an incredible price for the hardware, and with all the media hype happening, they had to buy them before they ran out and then figure out a use for them later.

Even I was considering buying one, and I knew I would have played with it for half an hour and then never touched it again.

macrael• 15 years ago

I'm with you, I think that if the Touchpad had launched at a $99 price, it would not have flown off the shelves the way that it has these last few days. Part of the reason people are buying them is that it is their last hurrah, no Touchpads will ever be made again. There is a very real novelty factor there. On top of that, it is not just a $99 tablet, but rather a $400 savings.

ja272• 15 years ago

Borders stores were packed during liquidation sales, despite the fact that there were few real bargains to be found. People love a perceived bargain.

ayanb• 15 years ago

Fire sales always have a novelty. Its not so much the price point but the innate human desire to pick up things at a price they otherwise could not have afforded or wanted to.

foobarbazetc• 15 years ago

WebOS is a terrible, flawed, slow as molasses OS.

WebOS will never gain traction because apps on it will always be much slower than native compiled apps on iOS or even JITed apps on Android.

It's that simple. No amount of buzzword compliance is going to change that.

Just look at this benchmark:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4658/40733.png

The device/OS which relies on JavaScript performance for everything is the slowest when it comes to JavaScript performance. :) Even if they could 2-2.5x performance, it'd still be noticeably slower than iOS or Android.

Anyone who thinks people are buying these TouchPads because they think they're a viable product is delusional at best. People are buying them because they're $99, and $99 doesn't buy you much these days.

revorad2• 15 years ago

That's why I want one to test my web apps, keeping in line with yesterday's discussion - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2911935.

But I haven't seen any fire sales here in the UK. The cheapest I've found is for ~£160 on ebay from people who bought the $99 ones in the US.

danlove• 15 years ago

Dixons/PC World/Curry's had one yesterday online, and in store today. Reduced to £89 I believe.

julestm• 15 years ago

http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/873167-hp-touchpad-prices-slashe...

£89 in Dixons? Haven't been able to confirm myself.

iaskwhy• 15 years ago

Check these sites: http://www.tz10.co.uk/touchpad/

I think I got one from Comet but it's hard to know even if I paid for it, demand has been huge and sites are being down seconds after they lower the price.

Also, people are buying them at the normal price because they know they can return them if they don't get a refund. And since stores don't want to deal with it, everyone is very confident stores will just refund it.

AndrewDucker• 15 years ago

When they put WebOS on the iPad it ran twice as fast: http://news.techeye.net/hardware/webos-did-better-on-an-ipad

The problem with the ToughPad was that the hardware was appallingly slow.

yardie2• 15 years ago

They didn't put WebOS on an iPad and no one has been able to verify this claim, ever. Now the apps, mostly, are javascript and css. Most apps you could run through the browser on an iPad and that is how WebOS development is done.

In fact you could start the WebOS emulator, designate a port to connect over and open your favorite browser to the IP and port of the emulator. This is how actual development is done as defined in their SDK.

Most of the people posting this ridiculous link don't know what they are talking about. Anyone can run a webos app in a browser. No one has been able to run webos outside of webOS devices.

dataminer• 15 years ago

WebOS is slow on TouchPad due to large amount of logging done in the background. There are patches available for WebOS which decrease / disable logging making the whole user experience quite snappy. The main culprit for slow performance are the logs not the hardware.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/how-to-improve-the-per...

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

> WebOS is a terrible, flawed, slow as molasses OS.

Maybe version 3 is. My Pre 2 is nice and responsive.

> WebOS will never gain traction because apps on it will always be much slower than native compiled apps on iOS or even JITed apps on Android.

JavaScript can be JITed. And you can write native code for it just fine. It's just not that much fun.

fpgeek• 15 years ago

translation:

Dear HP: Please Keep Burning Money For Our Entertainment

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

With HP focusing on enterprisey software, it'll never again be as entertaining to watch.

But I trust somehow reason will once more shine its light onto HP's board, that they will fire this idiot and abandon his silly idea of turning HP into SAP.

Steko• 15 years ago

Large amounts of unintended irony in this piece featuring tablet advice from Arrington (red flag) that amounts to "HP should sell large numbers of hardware for low margin".

You mean, just like the PC business they're trying to exit? And the console business that can't shoot straight because the era of $60 apps is fading fast?

Because you know, Best Buy is super excited to buy tablets from HP for just under $200 and retail them for $200 while being shut out of the app/ad/bandwidth/content ecosystem.

To make an ecosystem only strategy work today I think you need to have your own distribution network and HP isn't really in a position to burn bridges with Best Buy over the rounding error that is their tablet business.

davidedicillo• 15 years ago

I agree with you, beside the Best Buy comment. They already operate with small margins for the hardware, where they make most of the money is selling you all the other crap with it, from the case for your brand new tablet to a 3 year extended warranty.

zmmmmm• 15 years ago

Dear Techcrunch,

Android tablets will soon be sub-$200 and will come in any number of form factors, styles and configurations using an OS that actually has a chance of long term support. In fact if all you want is a web browsing device they are there already and have been for a while.

Macha• 15 years ago

Dear zmmmmm,

But they are using an OS that is competing directly with Apple and are therefore bad. Even if they do everything we just said we wanted for the price we said we want.

Yours, Techcrunch (especially MG Siegler).

ansy• 15 years ago

I think that's called Groupon. Taking billions of dollars of investor money and tying it up with no hope of making a single dime. You'll get millions of users and entrench yourself deeper and deeper in a broken business model.

SoupIce• 15 years ago

There is the WeTab which is in that price range with a GNU/Linux on it. MeeGo.

nl• 15 years ago

7" Capacitive (Android) tablets are already under $200: http://s.dealextreme.com/search/capacitive+android+tablet

These aren't crappy, low powered devices, either. Take this one: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/7-capacitive-screen-android-2-3.... It is Android 2.3, 1.2Ghz processor, HDMI out, etc etc. The only weakness is it is WiFi only, but it is only $166.

There are still supply constraints around larger 9" & 10" capacitive screens, but 7" screens are getting cheap enough now that it's possible 7" capacitive tablets will drop below $100 by the end of the year (depending on the exchange rate though..)

kloncks2• 15 years ago

It seems I'm in the minority here, but I really like what Arrington is saying.

People will pay $100-$200 for a dedicated eBook reader. As much as I love my iPad, it does come with a few extra things that one doesn't necessarily need. There's room in the market for a $200 tablet from a consumer point. I have no idea if it makes sense from the manufacturer's point of view, though.

That said, this recently created space [cheaper tablets] has started to be dominated by Android tablets. Can webOS find a place there? I don't know. But I think it will have a greater chance of taking on this market than the $500 range overwhelmingly handled by Apple's iPad.

edit: if they go as cheap as chips and hardware + a little more, they can also have a huge impact on basic tablets used for education, etc. in my dream world, techcrunch somehow licenses webOS and makes the CrunchPad once and for all.

double edit: in the comments someone suggested subsidizing the tablet device to lower its cost and making it up using app sales or a subscription. think game consoles. that would be interesting.

mitchty• 15 years ago

People may pay $100-200 for a device like that, the manufacturing reality may not allow for such a device at the moment.

kloncks2• 15 years ago

I'd like to know exactly where Arrington is coming from with the prices he has mentioned.

Without providing evidence, he did say that there is a strong possibility of these devices being made at the prices he has mentioned.

It would be a lower-quality product for sure and terms like a "good enough capacitive touch screen" bother me.

andrem• 15 years ago

Why will "people" pay that? I know it's cheaper than the kindle. Apart from the novelty factor though, why would anyone pay that much for a device to read books?

I have a 2003 version of an actual ebook reader with a passive screen. If all you are after is an ebook reader I am sure these things would sell for $20 at the most and you could make a happy profit. What a bargain eh?

The problem is that the market is not driven by people's desires, but rather by moneymakers' profits. If we can't make 25%+ on each sale, why bother?

tel• 15 years ago

I'm confused, the TouchPad is cheaper than a Kindle, true, but the Kindle has demonstrated that there's a huge market for $100-150 eBook readers. The TouchPad just isn't the right product.

ja272• 15 years ago

I think a whole lot more people would pay $30 a month for a tablet. If you can just pair that with some seemingly valuable service with a low variable cost, you'd have a winner. How about the New York Times tablet? The Playboy tablet? The ESPN College Sports Tablet? The Spotify Tablet? The O'Reilly Safari Tablet?

smoody• 15 years ago

"But one thing I was very right on is the huge demand for a less expensive tablet computer"

Arrington should be a futurist/ecomonist, not a op/ed writer -- after all, he was "very right" with this prediction! :-)

But, IMHO, I think he was very wrong that Crunchpads would have flown off the shelves. Brand names matter to consumers when it comes to consumer electronics (do you hear anyone talk about the notionink Adam anymore?). You can find a $200 tablet out there if you want to, but I don't see a lot of people looking beyond the brands they already trust for a solution.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

dumbass.

http://arnovatech.com/products/arn_10/index.html?country=us&...

people's ability to refuse to do a 30 second google search before they spout crap continues to amaze me.

clarkevans• 15 years ago

I didn't realize a company was offering Android tablets, $199 for 10" and $99 for 7". That's quite cool. Thank you for posting the link.

lhnn• 15 years ago

The website doesn't help me find how to buy their product... Google shouldn't have to be a part of my journey (I can't find it for sale).

neovive• 15 years ago

The TouchPad will make a great economics case study for price elasticity of demand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand). I'm sure someone has already worked out a model somewhere.

Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

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