HP Sells Tons of Discounted TouchPads. Proof There is Demand for Non Apple Tablets

Posted on August 20, 2011

HP deeply discounted its hot looking TouchPad and it quickly sold out of its stock despite being overwhelmed by traffic. HP dropped the price of the tablet from $399.99 to $99 for the 16GB device. HP says it will have more tablets in stock at a later date.

This is crystal clear evidence that a non-Apple tablet can fly off store shelves. All that matters is to have a good product and the right price point. Apple will eventually only have a small portion of tablet sales as some analysts have predicted. The manufacturers that end up with the biggest tablet market share may be the ones that can afford to discount the most. It won't be HP since they have inexplicably decided to abandon consumer products.

Tablet prices will keep falling, just like ebook reader prices have plunged over the past three years. It may take a couple years for them to get to $99.99 without a firesale, but eventually they will.