The moment my eyes fell on the title of this article, my face cracked into a wry grin. Here we go...
HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
41–50 of 128 posts
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#42While 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 might note that Microsoft lost money on every XBox initially. But gaming was a different business.
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#43Forget about HP for a minute. Are there any devs out there that are considering creating a WebOS app because of this new influx of users? I'm genuinely interested...perhaps it would be worth it.
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect this is just HP clearing out the supply chain of already purchased parts and units still at the factory. HP's cost is probably just a few dollars per unit to ship and possibly assemble them. I find it hard to believe anyone approved an entirely new order of parts at $300 BOM just to sell them for $99.
You may be right, but if it's not an ops guy getting fired, then it should be a PR guy. I mean, look at this: "Before I share, let me first say thank you for enthusiasm for this product. Since we announced the price drop, the number of inquiries about the product and the speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning. I think it’s safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response. Despite annou…
A PR guy wrote this, what did you expect?
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#45It's pretty clear to me that they underpriced it. They should lower the price to the point where the clear out inventory. But not lower. Considering how much unmet demand there is at 99$ it's obvious that have not even come close to optimizing the price/demand curve.
The current lowest Buy it Now price at Ebay is $230-240. That means that's the price at which people will buy them -- but not so much that people will snap them up instantly, or the price you could see them available at would by higher.
That suggests that they could probably move units pretty well at $199 -- it's below another psychological barrier from $230, and definitely still seems extremely affordable compared with the iPad or even the Asus Transformer.
I'm not sure if they had a reason for marking the units down to $99 (e.g. "we need to get these things off the books as soon as humanly possible to get a clean slate") or if they just made a huge mistake.
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#46Forget about HP for a minute. Are there any devs out there that are considering creating a WebOS app because of this new influx of users? I'm genuinely interested...perhaps it would be worth it.
Ok, I’ll pretend to be a VC. So you make a WebOS game/app. What kind of users do you expect to have? A whole bunch of cheapos who bought the tablet because it was $99. And how much do you think those people will pay for your app?
Next question. Word of mouth. If those people like your app, they’ll tell friends. Will those friends have WebOS tablets?
Let’s talk about the lifetime value of your code base. How long can we expect to make sales of your app? After we have saturated the market of existing Touchpads, will there ever be another piece of hardware running WebOS to sell to new customers who might buy your app?
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IMHO.
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#47The offer they mention:
We are grateful for your patience and loyalty and to show our gratitude, we are offering you an exclusive one-time opportunity to save an additional amount on all of our products, valid through the end of the day tomorrow, Wednesday, August 31, 2011. You'll save 25% off all printers, ink, HP accessories, and PCs starting at or above $599.
Not bad, if there's something specific you want.
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#48While 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…
Exactly. The sort of people that are buying a Touchpad right now aren't the same type that will buy a $500 device and spend several hundred more on apps.
Heck, I'd like to buy a Touchpad at $99, but only because I'm interested in getting Android to run on it, which is probably the last thing HP wants.
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#49Whoever made this decision should be fired. "We took a $100m loss on the first batch of TouchPads, what's a couple million more?"
i guess it depends how you look at it ... for $100m they are certainly going to get huge mileage for their Brands - its like marketing drive for HP, WebOS, WebOS App catalog etc. + they will make some money by selling apps. Also one has to remember that this brand value creation will help them fetch more $$$ when they decide to sell their h/w business and WebOS business (either the whole OS or licensing it) - All in all $100m is worth loosing (spending) :-)
In fact they should turn this accidental success into super-success by creating HUGE WebOS ecosystem for at least a year and then decide what to do with it - they can get more money by selling or licensing the whole ecosystem with millions and millions of users worldwide than wrapping things up pre-maturely ... also can you imagine how much they could make if they start streaming & selling music, movies, ebooks etc. thru their ecosystem ...
Re: HP to produce one more batch of Touchpads
#50I find this really annoying. I already wasted too much time trying to get one in the first round. Now I am supposed to waste time again?
I actually considered setting up a web service for companies doing such a thing. I think the proper way would be to create a lottery where everybody could register in peace and there would be a couple of lucky winners.
A similar thing happened with sparkfun electronics when they offered shopping up to 100$ (or something) for free - except it was impossible to get the order form to load, resulting in lots of wasted time.
In the end I tend to be angry at the company for wasting my time. So companies, if you want to be generous, at least do it in the right way.