HP TouchPad Liquidation Begins

[bastones]

After the news that HP will be discontinuing it's hardware business (news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20094222-92/hp-halts-webos-business-spins-off-pc-unit), HP has already started liquidating their TouchPad tablet computer. The TouchPad was reduced from a start price of $399.99, to a whopping $99 for the entry-level 16GB model. However, all of the TouchPads are now out of stock in the Unites States.

According to All Things Digital, Best Buy was (and still is) sitting on a lot of unsold HP TouchPads (news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20093307-93/best-buy-sitting-on-a-pile-of-unsold-hp-tablets) - obviously because people are buying other tablets instead.

It's an interesting move HP is making a business shift, primarily from hardware more to software (pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391379,00.asp) (and hopefully this includes the webOS platform).

According to reports a month or two back, HP was (and confirmed) it was looking at licensing webOS to hardware partners.

HP dropped an absolute bombshell (gottabemobile.com/2011/08/18/hp-kills-webos-in-a-slew-of-whats-next-announcements) on the tech world today. It’s killing the HP TouchPad, its webOS tablet, and it will not be releasing any further webOS powered smartphones. The HP Pre 3 never had a chance. So, now what? The logical guess has been that HP intends on licensing webOS out to hardware makers. We’ve even theorized about a few potential customers (gottabemobile.com/2011/08/18/who-should-buy-webos-vote).

...

And now, we have confirmation from HP itself that this will be the route that the company takes with the software. HP’s Richard Kerris, who is HP’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations for webOS, tweeted out something just a short time ago that points to webOS living on in other pieces of hardware.

Read more: gottabemobile.com/2011/08/18/hp-to-explore-hardware-partners-for-webos

What do you think of this latest development with HP?

[Kristine Habeck]

I don't really have a crystal magic ball to guess what will happen, but I know the HP will have something to speculate about this. The only thing that is certain is that once the dust settles on this new development, the gossip on this topic will effectively reduce...

[bastones]

Originally Posted by Kristine Habeck

I don't really have a crystal magic ball to guess what will happen, but I know the HP will have something to speculate about this. The only thing that is certain is that once the dust settles on this new development, the gossip on this topic will effectively reduce...

I hope HP will license webOS to hardware partners as it will push a third major licensed platform out there including Android and Windows Phone (although Android isn't licensed per se). I just hope they do not make the same mistakes as Google had with Android at first, and force strict requirements and standards on hardware partners to ensure fragmentation doesn't occur. Since webOS will probably be licensed I think it won't have the same problem as Android in some cases still has.