HP just raised prices on its dead HP TouchPad tablet.
What? Ever since Hewlett-Packard killed its fledgling TouchPad tablet and began selling it at fire sale prices to get rid of inventory, the once flailing tablet has been selling like crazy. At $99 and $149, who could resist it? It sold out quickly.Then a couple of weeks ago, HP announced it would relieve parts makers of inventory and sell a few more. But it’s upping the price of a product it assassinated abruptly in August.
Now, after weeks of having no stock left and tons of demand for a dirt-cheap tablet, HP now is returning its zombie-ish TouchPad to its site. After these sell, HP says, the TouchPad is dead. But notice the switcharoo here. HP now is charging $220 (16 GB) and $250 (32 GB), obviously testing what the market will bear. With all this craziness, I wouldn’t doubt it.
This looks like a bad mood and is going against the grain. After all, HP is in fact discontinuing it after this round — so it says — and support will stop after a year. And consider. RIM just dropped its BlackBerry PlayBook by $200 — it’s now $299 at Best Buy. Even HTC sunk the price of its Flyer down to $200. Last week, Amazon, clearly taking a loss, announced a $199 Kindle Fire streaming video tablet.
Even with the jump in price, the TouchPad might still appeal. With HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman — ex CEO of Ebay who understands better than anyone the value of auctioneering — could HP be resurrecting the fallen gadget? I wouldn’t put it past this multibillion dollar company that has a tough board and international customers and stockholders to contend with.
At the time of this writing, HP’s site showed it was still out of stock. That will change tomorrow. To me, it feels either like a switcharoo, a savvy move or a reaction to something HP and others never considered: non iPad tablets really can sell if they cost next to nothing. HP has already sold more than a million since it killed it.
What do you think? Did you buy a Fire Sale tablet — or are you considering paying a little more for the new ones. Do you need more information? We do. We’ll follow this continuing story.
Leave a comment and let us know.
7 Comments
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Jen Watson
HP raising the price of it’s discontinued unsupported touchpad is criminal. They promised more with a limit of one per customer at the firesale prices and now they change their minds? Sick.
Steve Krause
Agreed. Not sure why I would buy a new HP TouchPad that’s going end-of-life when I can just wait and get a new Kindle Fire for $199.
shashi
Now the price on their website is $499.99, and is out of stock
Steve Krause
Ouch… Yeah that’s quite a bump isn’t it.
Austin Krause
HP took a big gamble by going Web OS, but it didn’t pay off. Now everyone who purchased TouchPad is probably wishing they went Android or iOS.
San
You are just surmising based on the HP website which has made a ton of mistakes in the past. First of all, it has never come back in stock on the web site and has never sold at that price. So, there is no point thinking about it until they actually stock up.
jeff
I have a touchpad and it is a great device, and with the amount sold during the “fire sale” developers have been pushing out more apps for it. There is a market there, even at 250 it will still sell very well.