[HH] more $99 TouchPads, Android tablets

[Tom Metro]

Kurt Keville wrote:
> Well, I guess some people got one before eBay crashed...

An article on the sell-out:
http://mobile.informationweek.com/80269/show/8a673c635b426cedd5c1b96973a365f6&t=mdil5fv4gjjs847mb58eeslgc0

  Only those with a hair-trigger finger were able to score HP's $99 and
  $149 TouchPad tablets, which went on sale at 7 p.m. (ET) Sunday
  evening on eBay. The cheaper 16-GB model (mostly refurbished units)
  was scooped up within minutes...
  ...the sale lasted all of 25 minutes...
  ...the total is rather pathetic. eBay shows that 2,316 of the $99
  16-GB TouchPads and 5,534 of the $149 32-GB models were sold. That's a
  total of just 7,850 units.

  (You may remember that HP held a firesale for the TouchPad back in
  August. Demand for the TouchPad at $99 was so much that HP ordered
  another production run.)

Huh? Is that accurate? Why would you build *more* of a product that you
know you are going to sell at a substantial loss?

They did use them around black Friday as a sweetener if you bought an HP
desktop or laptop. You still had to pay the $99. I guess from that
perspective they could charge the loss to the marketing budget of the
PCs and still make a profit on the PC sale.


  Buyers acted so feverishly Sunday that eBay's website ran very slow
  during the sale. PayPal crumbled under the strain, firing off error
  messages when it was unable to complete transactions.

I would think eBay has faced bigger draws than TouchPads.


Out of curiosity I took a look to see if the HP eBay store had any of
these a bit before 7 PM and then again around 8 or 9 PM. There was no
sign that they ever existed...(no pre-sale announcement and no post-sale
"sorry we sold out").

I'm not too disappointed. I likely wouldn't have bought one anyway. I'm
not convinced they're worth the bother even at $100, unless the
as-delivered product did everything you wanted from a tablet. Or you
planned to become a WebOS open source developer.

Android tablets seem to be clustering around a few price points:

$100 - Coby, Pandigital - e-readers at best
$200 - Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, and a slew of first-gen tablets hanging
around as old stock, refurbs, or used.
$300 - Acer, Asus, and Motorola models from last Winter.
$400+ - Current models.

and every 6 to 12 months everything slides down a step. It won't be long
before you can get TouchPad-equivalent hardware loaded with Android for
$100.

 From a hardware hacker perspective, what interests me is what useful
things can you do with say a $50 Coby e-reader? A cheap color
touch-screen with WiFi should open up lots of possibilities. For
example, a home automation "console" that's cheap enough to put into
most of your rooms. A replacement for your thermostat? Security camera
monitor? Virtual window? Information appliance (weather, etc.). Much
like widgets on your desktop.

Will there be tools to quickly throw together custom UIs on them,
perhaps like this:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/03/android-design-preview-simplifies-app-mockups-developers-lives/

or maybe just using a web UI is the way to go, if they have a usable web
browser.


I'm waiting to see what interesting products slide down to the $200
range in the next 6 months. I'm looking to replace my 5" automotive GPS
appliance (an orphaned Motorola) with a 7" Android tablet. Assuming I
can find a navigation app I like. Just imposing the restriction that it
needs to work from locally stored data instead of pulling everything
from the Internet rules out most nav apps.

 -Tom