Group items tagged

prices.

Best Buy, the electronics retailer, cut the price of the TouchPad to $99 in an attempt to clear its stock. Best Buy was last week reported to have more than 200,000 of the tablets. The low price brought queues outside its stores and, according to one staff employee, a “stampede” from customers hoping to land a bargain.

HP's decision to discontinue its TouchPad product, Best Buy will now provide clearance pricing for all TouchPad 16GB and 32GB models regardless of previously advertised prices or promotions," Best Buy said. The company said that anyone who had bought a TouchPad after June 19 would be entitled to a refund.

Though Amazon.com has not discounted the TouchPad, the device still went to the top of Amazon’s bestselling electronics chart. The HP tablet took the top two places in the chart, ahead of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, which is usually a fixture at number one.

each of the gadgets cost HP at least £180 just to build, so selling the Touchpad for £89 would never have been considered until the firm decided to abandon it.

others hoping to loosen Apple’s stranglehold on the tablet computing market.

The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same £400-ish price point as the iPad. But, put together with all the other Android tablets, it’s estimated they are outsold by Apple’s devices eight to one.

Amazon, which is rumoured to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn. Like Apple with the iPad, it has built and dominated a market for itself with the Kindle, its hugely successful e-reader.

Kindle’s success is its relatively low price of £111

Hewlett-Packard

HP’s bombshell revelations

where it holds the global No. 1 spot

TouchPad

Apple (AAPL) has positioned its iPad very well for years to come against challengers in the tablet market.

Apple’s iPad was announced in January 2010

no tablet has caught up to what Apple offers.

happy with a Google (GOOG) Android Honeycomb tablet; fewer have purchased a BlackBerry (RIMM) Playbook.

third-party app support,

table the TouchPad?

For most people, the iPad is the most complete tablet available.

Apple holds the tablet crown.

phone apps,

a media store,

tens of millions were already used to.

earliest

tablet contenders appeared and they’re just now gaining certain key features: movie stores, for example, and stretch and zoom capabilities for phone apps. Consumers want a complete tablet experience, not one that’s “coming soon.”

HP’s $1.2 billion investment in webOS persuaded me that it was in the tablet race for the long haul. I defended the company’s move to sell the TouchPad at a discount and even bought one, only to find out days later that I was wrong: HP wasn’t selling the tablet at low prices to expand the user base quickly and help attract developers. HP apparently gave the TouchPad only a brief chance to gain an audience.

swiftly pulled.

following in the footsteps of the firm's successful Kindle e-reader and the Android tablets would be a natural extension of the firm's already-launched Amazon App Store.

take on the all-conquering iPad head on.

Amazon may also sell the device at a loss, as it does the Kindle e-reader, recouping costs through selling applications, books and services.

with the Wi-Fi only Kindle already retailing at $139.

$200 full-featured Android tablet with Amazon's marketing muscle behind it may well give Apple the competition it has so far not had to endure.