TouchPad price cut
August 5th, 2011, 7:38pm by JakeAlbert spotted for all of us the drop in the HP TouchPad price, and even better deals are available– $300 from Staples (if your local store carries the 16GB), $344 at HP and a few other deals confirmed at webOS Roundup. Much debate as to whether selling it for $300 cheapens the device, but I think that price is an exception– that’s a snafu on Staples’ end. At $400, it’s pretty compelling. Yesterday, the TouchPad wasn’t among the top 15 sellers at Amazon, and today it’s shot up to #2 & #7, probably set to rise a bit more through Sunday. At $300, I think it’s a no brainer for anyone that wants a tablet– I’d get one to use as a photo frame, but truth is, the one I already have performs that task just fine. What are your thoughts on the price drop? Discuss while I prepare to brick 2 Pre phones.
August 5th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
The price drop is great for webOS fans. I’ll quote myself wrt to the PrePlus channel stuffing at Verizon:
Palm will eventually shove the million phones into the market one way or another. 2.5 million webOS users oughta be enough to ensure that we don’t get completely ignored by developers, website designers, etc.
If HP can move a noticeable number of tablets, by hook or by crook, at the very least, websites might have an incentive to spend the 5 minutes necessary to add the Touchpad user agent to their tablet whitelist. It’s all well and good that the Touchpad can run Flash if necessary, but if a website had a perfectly good HTML5 alternative already out in parallel for the iPad, it would be my preference that the Touchpad should get the tablet optimized version as well.
August 6th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I had 2 friends yesterday hunting for a Staples with the 16GB TouchPad… not sure if such a thing exists. If they were able to get the HP deal for $344, it’s possible they would’ve taken that. Or find a price match. It does look like the TouchPad is a compelling option at $300 or $350 for semi-regular folk. Both carry Palm phones, but neither seemed much interested in spending $500 on any tablet.
August 6th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Saw this posted on WOR, and sounds about right, “One thing to add – the Staples manager was very upset about his store losing profits on this sale – he said that this coupon was supposed to be released NEXT weekend (when the HP sale is over) He also said that it was posted accidentally and there was over 1000 emails sent back and forth over this coupon. He said he thinks whomever released it at Staples Marketing is toast.”
August 7th, 2011 at 2:26 am
I wouldn’t expect the stacked discounts to affect Staples profitability right? HP should be footing one of the $100 discount and Staples footing one of the $100 discounts. Assuming Staples makes as much on an msrp $500 item as on a $400 msrp item, I guess (probably not a correct assumption). Anyway, what do you think of the tagline, “Works like nothing else?” I think it would have been better as “works like something else.”
August 7th, 2011 at 3:03 am
A slogan should never contain both works and nothing. Gawd, Palm has such a track record of coming up with eminently mockable taglines.
I have a hunch that the Staples coupon included a HP kickback, but maybe not. The 32GB model was available at every local Staples Friday, will see what the stock status is Sunday. Now #2 & #5 on Amazon, can knock off the Asus.
August 7th, 2011 at 7:01 am
Read this post yesterday about why HP’s price cut in the TouchPad don’t necessarily mean that it’s going badly.
August 7th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Staples has a $100 coupon off any tablet, so it’s not a Touchpad specific promo. To the extent that they are using tablets as a loss leader, the extra HP discount should be working even better! Anyway, it’s crazy. Tablets at $300 probably does mean that Staples has excess inventory to burn (not just Touchpad, I mean).
August 7th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Friday, all 10 nearest Staples had ample stock of the 32GB model. Today, 3 are sold out, 3 are low stock and 4 show regular stock levels. Wouldn’t be surprised to see them sold out by the end of the day. So they will solve a bit of Staples’ excess inventory problem. HP probably doubled their TouchPad sales this weekend.
August 8th, 2011 at 3:59 am
and the weekend ends with the TouchPad as the #2 & #3 bestselling tablets on Amazon. Definitely a solid bump with the $100 price drop, I think they’ll be able to move plenty with good holiday deals.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1232597011
August 10th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
HP just made the price drop permanent. Good for them to recognize what it takes to compete. I do like how they waited until the return window closed for all the early adopters. As Mike would say, that’s like school in the summertime…
August 10th, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Well, I got my $50 loyal customer discount. Amazon price matched $35 or thereabouts. And I get a $50 credit for the App Catalog. I think that’s pretty standard for early adopters. So I’m not bothered by the timing.