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HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

h20435.www2.hp.com

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Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#81

Post by lionhearted »

mcnees287 wrote: post #71
lionhearted wrote: post #65

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…

Dump the TIPS man.

> Dump the TIPS man.

I had some USD, didn't see any good buys, and wanted to stay liquid in USD. I figured inflation was definitely coming, so even if interest rates rose (unlikely anyways, but the only real risk) it'd likely be cancelled by the inflation premium.

The bonds appreciated around 7% in four months, so it worked out okay.

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#82

Post by MatthewPhillips »

wmf wrote: post #18
martingordon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy doesn't hold. Try to use a TouchPad without buying apps and you'll find that it works pretty well. Try to use a console without buying games. Hope you enjoy navigating menus!

Except the PS3, which is a pretty good Blu-ray/Netflix/DLNA player and probably had problems with low attach rate in the first few years.

$300 is a pretty expensive blu-ray and streaming player.

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#83

Post by danilocampos »

teyc wrote: post #42
ansy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been forwarded before and I agree with detractors to this kind of thinking. First, HP is a big company that has much better ways to turn money into more money than making something people are unwilling to buy at a reasonable price. Second, growing the webOS ecosystem in this way founds it on false principles. Everything that seems to work when you're selling for a loss, might not work at all when you're sell…

I might note that Microsoft lost money on every XBox initially. But gaming was a different business.

A business where they can extract enormous licensing fees from content sold at a much higher price point.

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#84

Post by elithrar »

wmf wrote: post #18
martingordon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy doesn't hold. Try to use a TouchPad without buying apps and you'll find that it works pretty well. Try to use a console without buying games. Hope you enjoy navigating menus!

Except the PS3, which is a pretty good Blu-ray/Netflix/DLNA player and probably had problems with low attach rate in the first few years.

> Except the PS3, which is a pretty good Blu-ray/Netflix/DLNA player and probably had problems with low attach rate in the first few years.

And it's precisely why it took Sony a while to make any money out of their PlayStation division. They underestimated how many people would find it useful 'out of the box'.

It's a great Blu-Ray player that just happens to play games. Sony sold it as the other way around.

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#85

Post by cpeterso »

w33ble wrote: post #61
heydenberk wrote: post #12

HP should do what they should've done a while ago: promise to make WebOS well-supported and well-stocked with apps, and bring the TouchPad into production at $200 or $250 to still undercut the competition but not bleed cash so profusely. I'd buy into it as a user and a developer.

Given that the tablets are still fetching that price on eBay right now, over a week after the firesale started, I think that's exactly the price they need to hit. The tablet simply had no demand at $500+, but at $250, people are willing to buy in. $250 for what is essentially a handy, high-tech toy is about right. Plus, HP wouldn't be senselessly bleeding so much cash. Ebay sales show up people are clearly willing to…

Based on some TouchPad teardowns, manufacturing a TouchPad costs about $318 in parts plus $10 in labor. If HP sold TouchPads for $250, they would "only" lose $68.

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carr...

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#86

Post by spiralganglion »

ghshephard wrote: post #75
spiralganglion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hiding a valuable contribution because you disagree with it probably isn't the intended purpose of the system. Hiding something that lessens the quality of the conversation, independent of the skew it takes, makes more sense.

It doesn't matter what the common practice is. What matters is preserving the integrity of the discussion.

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#87

Post by throwaway32 »

nkassis wrote: post #77
patrickk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder why it's so expensive to run the thing? I mean, it should be pretty cheap to deliver small applications like that. Maybe the labor to check all the new apps?

i frankly wonder if there isnt some form of holywood accounting going on so their 30% cut can be "justified".

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#88

Post by zmmmmm »

ansy wrote: post #38
corin_ wrote: post #29

While selling at a loss to make profit on software doesn't look feasible in this market, here's an alternative suggestion, though I'm not sure if this is feasible either - just more likely than the first option. Sell loads at a loss, I mean really loads. Announce that the platform isn't dead after all. Use the fact that so many people have the devices to bring in app developers, make it a more desirable platform. The…

This has been forwarded before and I agree with detractors to this kind of thinking. First, HP is a big company that has much better ways to turn money into more money than making something people are unwilling to buy at a reasonable price. Second, growing the webOS ecosystem in this way founds it on false principles. Everything that seems to work when you're selling for a loss, might not work at all when you're sell…

I was going to disagree but then I worked out the numbers and it doesn't fly.

Suppose they invested $1b more. At a loss of $150 / device that would let them put ~6 million devices into the ecosystem, not counting phones. 6m devices would get it off to a start but it is still not enough to get it within an order of magnitude of the iPad and probably won't even get you ahead of the plethora of Android makers who will most likely sell more than that combined.

If you can't pole vault at least into a solid second place then you've essentially made no strategic gain at all - you're just in a slightly better third place.

Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads

#90

Post by aphexairlines »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #82
wmf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the PS3, which is a pretty good Blu-ray/Netflix/DLNA player and probably had problems with low attach rate in the first few years.

$300 is a pretty expensive blu-ray and streaming player.

not when standalone players were also $300+
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