It has been an unusual year for Hewlett Packard. Their Touchpad was promoted as being a viable alternative to the ever popular Apple iPad. Sadly they killed support for WebOS and the price plummeted to under $100 in the US and £89 in the UK. Stocks sold out in a few days.
We reported a while ago that HP were going to release another batch of Touchpads due to the demand. Yesterday they announced “since we announced the price drop, the number of inquiries about the product and the speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning.
We have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand. We don’t know exactly when these units will be available or how many we’ll get, and we can’t promise we’ll have enough for everyone. We do know that it will be at least a few weeks before you can purchase.”
This final run of the bargain tablet should be available near the end of October, and they are holding the price points for both 16GB and 32GB units ($100 and $150 in US and £89 and £130 in UK respectively).
Hewlett Packard are making a loss on every tablet sold, with the estimated price for production around $300 per unit. Everyone has been shocked by the demand for the tablets, especially with the demise of the operating system. News however has emerged that Android has already been adapted to run on the tablet, but there are plenty of bugs to fix before it would be usable. We are confident that skilled developers are already working on porting over the Google operating system.
Kitguru says: Did you pick one up last time around?