71–80 of 128 posts
Tangential: I think HP's stock might be selling for less than the company's liquidation value at this point, depending on what you think of their patents. That's ignoring the fact that they also have some profitable high margin businesses. Sure, they're doing some boneheaded stuff lately, but I couldn't resist buying some. Buying $1 for 88 cents is usually a good move. I sold some TIPS bonds to buy shares. Disclaimer…
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It may be that it's worthwhile to produce and sell them at $100-$150 given the sunk cost of their leftover unassembled bulk componentry.
Actually this is not as far fetched as it may seem. Here's a potential scenario, building on the above, HP may have entered into contracts with manufacturers for 'n' units. When they shut it down, they had only received 'm' units, where m Here, they see a rather unusual demand and must have made some calculation that making the original 'n' units and earning good will by doing that, per the original contracts is bett…
Did HP accidentally just find the best way to break into the tablet market? Sell hardware at a loss and make it up on software. Console makers have been doing it for some time now.
Selling at a loss works when every game costs 50 dollars.. for 1/2 dollar apps, it's a much harder ladder. I hope that's the case, though, bcse I still love Palm, and would love to see WebOS succeed.
I, along with many others, derided the $499 price point, and called it stupid. $99 is fantastic, but they've obviously decided against making it a long term viable business for them.
Despite what many others said, I strongly believe these would have sold well at $249-$299, and could have enabled HP to make a play to be a strong outside third, and then possibly a second, in the tablet space.
Whoever made this decision should be fired. "We took a $100m loss on the first batch of TouchPads, what's a couple million more?"
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You may be right, but if it's not an ops guy getting fired, then it should be a PR guy. I mean, look at this: "Before I share, let me first say thank you for enthusiasm for this product. 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. I think it’s safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response. Despite annou…
I don't understand all the down-votes. This seems like a valid and well-meant contribution to the discussion, being voted down because it presents something slightly contrarian. Why is martingordon's suggestion any more unworthy of HN than the earlier suggestion that the person responsible for this new run be fired? They're both looking at this news inquisitively, trying to understand the forces behind the public act…
If labor and shipping per unit costs $50 (totally made up), then $99 ain't lookin so bad
No need to make up wild guesses. iSuppli says the TouchPad bill of materials is $318. http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carr... Even if you think they're off by 10%, $99 would never work.
Did HP accidentally just find the best way to break into the tablet market? Sell hardware at a loss and make it up on software. Console makers have been doing it for some time now.
It appears Apple doesn't make money from apps, apparently they roughly break even from the app store with a 30% cut of apps: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2649475 " ...Peter Oppenheimer added, “We run the App Store just a little over breakeven,” implicitly making the case that the App Store was not a big profit generator for the company. " http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_app_store_runs_... If Apple…
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I don't understand all the down-votes. This seems like a valid and well-meant contribution to the discussion, being voted down because it presents something slightly contrarian. Why is martingordon's suggestion any more unworthy of HN than the earlier suggestion that the person responsible for this new run be fired? They're both looking at this news inquisitively, trying to understand the forces behind the public act…
A downvote on a contributor can be, and frequently is, a vote of disagreement, regardless of how well intentioned and expressed the contributor was.
Sometimes people feel the need to register disagreement but can't be bothered to write a specific reply as to why, and while it sucks that many people do that via downvoting the contribution score, it is understandable why they do it and there is probably a better fix for it than just telling them they shouldn't do it (they won't listen).
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The model could work like the console market. Sony and Microsoft both initially sold their core hardware at a loss with the hope of making up the difference in game license fees and big margins on peripherals. However, it'd be a pretty tall order to get $200+ dollars per person out the HP App Store especially when Apple has pushed the expected price down to $1 for most apps. Also, with a device price so low I'd have…
Actually I bet Apple could pull that off, if they charged more overhead for iTunes (audio & video). $199 iPad with included Apple TV -- might work.
sometimes you have to lose money to make money. maybe they're trying to capture the long tail of ad/apps revenue? it's a very risky move nonetheless.
The Touchpad sale thus far has tarnished the reputations of a few third party resellers who mishandled inventory management during the firesale, see:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/seller/at-a-glance.html?ie=UTF... (note 30 day negative percentage)
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Onsale
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Datavis
By making more units HP comes across as the 'good guy' here towards the (perhaps bargain-minded) early adopters and gives people an increased positive impression of the WebOS brand and I think they are hoping that'll help them get back something closer to what they paid for Palm when they attempt to resell it all (which I think they will do, though obviously this is just speculation on my part).