After firesale, now HP Touchpads get 6 free apps from HP

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2011/08/6-pack.html

by karteek • 15 years ago

41 31 15 years ago

blog.palm.com

mattmiller2• 15 years ago

A part of me thinks that this is whole thing is a marketing gimmick to create a bunch of touchpad fans.

wccrawford• 15 years ago

Of course it is. The question is: Will it work?

dpio• 15 years ago

I hope so.

mattmiller2• 15 years ago

They got me. The touchpad is pretty cool.

notatoad• 15 years ago

not to create touchpad fans, the touchpad is dead. it's about creating webos fans. what they're doing with the firesale and now with the apps is increasing the value of the platform so they can sell or license it for a higher price

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

That's a rather clever salvage plan. I would not have thought to try that.

r00fus• 15 years ago

To me, this smacks of Palm just continuing executing in spite of Corporate's (ie, Apotheker's) decisive move.

Good for Palm.

jeffclark2• 15 years ago

It's strange. $99 firesale, new TouchPads in the hands of a bunch of nerds, show off some "good" (not not "great") apps by giving them away.

I kinda hope it's all marketing hype. But now I want decent, functioning apps for this thing.

I created a legit WebOS app for myself in about 30 minutes. The development of these apps are unbelievably quick since it's just HTML/CSS/JS.

Your entire dev environment is a text editor, a WebKit browser and the inspection pane - the same one built into Chrome/Safari/Whathaveyou.

It'd be a shame to see WebOS completely die off.

JLW• 15 years ago

Sadly it's starting to look that way

barkingcat2• 15 years ago

Did you create your app before or after you heard about HP killing the platform off?

If it was after, what made you not develop any apps when the platform was viable?

This would be a great postmortem question for the HP team - if they had such a compelling development platform, why didn't anyone want to make the effort before they killed the entire thing?

jeffclark2• 15 years ago

After.

The only reason I didn't create one before was because I didn't think the platform had enough users to make the ROI on learning how to program for WebOS worth it.

tremendo• 15 years ago

new TouchPads in the hands of a bunch of nerds…

I looked for one in local stores and they all told me that eBay hustlers had bought them very quickly after the price drop. Haven't looked on eBay but if true then it's not necessarily the nerds that got them, that could do something useful with them.

diminish• 15 years ago

i am curious now how much share this firesale gives the touchpad got in q3 2011.

rbanffy3• 15 years ago

Quick guess: Best Buy had 270,000 unsold units. Assuming they have 10% of all the market, there would be now 2.7 million Touchpads out there.

All Pre 3 inventory in Europe will get sold the same way.

Raphael• 15 years ago

"HP’s initial order from its Taiwanese contract manufacturer, Compal, was for between 500,000 and one million units." http://allthingsd.com/20110822/how-much-did-hp-lose-on-the-t...

base• 15 years ago

Is there a store in Europe with this cheap touchpads?

angryasian• 15 years ago

received message that promo codes were no longer valid because of exceeded usage.

sent from HP Touchpad

dustyreagan3• 15 years ago

I got the same message.

watty2• 15 years ago

same - I was really excited about Sparkle and Big Boss. Apparently they've been dead since last night. They succeeded in getting me to put in my credit card info too!

gravitronic• 15 years ago

Reminds me of a similar let down when a certain tablet computer was sold at a ridiculously low price and quickly became impossible to obtain...

sjs382• 15 years ago

Same... :-(

dustyreagan3• 15 years ago

You have to put a credit card on file to use the promocodes. So, they've just made it much easier for users to impulsively buy other apps in the future, and they've shown people how to use the app store. Not a bad marketing plan!

Personally I planned on making zero webOS app purchases in anticipation of installing Android. But now that my CC is on file, I'll probably have Angry Birds on here by the end of the month. :p

conradev3• 15 years ago

Angry Birds is free ;P

dustyreagan3• 15 years ago

Oh! Nice! I may be able to stick to my plan after all then! :)

conradev3• 15 years ago

"Eligibility Requirements: US-based HP employees, HP reseller partners, HP customers and HP webOS developer partners are eligible to use these App Promo codes. Promo participants require a TouchPad with a current functioning user profile; with credit card purchasing enabled. The promo codes below will expire on August 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM. Promo codes are available for as long as inventories last."

The codes are invalid, it seems that, according to the last sentence, the inventory has run out. Why HP, why?

watty2• 15 years ago

Because they just wanted you to enter your credit card information!

conradev3• 15 years ago

I already had mine entered >_>

brackin• 15 years ago

Wow, 6 apps!

After firesale, now HP Touchpads get 6 free apps from HP

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