2011 is the year of the iPad, not the year of the tablet – everyone knows that, even HP and their “iPad Killer” friends.
It finally looks like they’ve realized that it’s iPad or bust for consumers.
You see, Best Buy is a little bit miffed with HP after shipping only 25,000 units of the HP Touchpad. This leaves Best Buy with a whopping 90% of the 270,000 units they received still on Best Buy shelves.
Not great for a tablet device that HP had a lot of confidence in.
Things didn’t get off to a good start with HP instantly slashing the price of the Touchpad by $100 at launch. Not a great sign!
Speaking of price slashing… it’s not only HP that are counting the pennies and cents of entering the tablet market. According to Digitimes…
Motorola, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Asustek and Acer have all recently reduced their tablet prices with the lowest price currently at US$370; however, with their inventory will become harder to digest, the sources believe there will be at least two waves of price cuts from the end of September to the year-end holiday, reducing the tablet average price level to US$350 and may even drop further to US$300 in the future.
$300 HP Touchpad Tablet? You know what, that’s not actually a bad price. It actually looks like a decent tablet. Russell Brand thinks so anyway…