One Final Manufacturing Run of Touchpads 221
Accepted on the first attempt, lochnessie writes "HP has announced a limited manufacturing run of Touchpads to be available in the next few weeks. The HP employee making the announcement posted 'I think it's safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response' to their massively discounted, sold-at-a-huge-loss tablet."
If I had to guess... (Score:5, Informative)
If I had to guess, it's probably because they already have orders in with their suppliers that they can't cancel and contractual obligations to fulfill. The costs of making this final run are probably sunk costs, and they figured they might as well go ahead and make those last $99 sales before everything is shut down and done.
Price point (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to see what sort of price the market has set, go onto eBay. The 16GB version is selling.. and I mean with real bidders.. at about £200 ($325), with the 32GB version coming in at around £230 ($370). So this is perhaps the sort of price point they should have been selling at.
Re:Inmates running asylum? (Score:4, Informative)
If you had actually followed the news you would be aware that HP offered to refund the price difference to anyone that bought a touchpad after a certain date (IIRC it was July 15th, a month and half before the price cut if not the very day they went on sale). You could do it through the retailer or directly through HP. It was a very fair offer IMO.
Re:Maybe they should just make them (Score:4, Informative)
First, look at the iSuppli BOM...
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx [isuppli.com]
The display is $69. The Touch Screen is $63. $45 for 32GB NAND. $26 for DRAM. $20 for the dual-core processor. $12 for power management. $8 for sensors. $5.50 for WiFi. $30 for the case, connectors, PCB, etc.. $20 for the battery. $5 for box and contents. $10 for manufacturing.
You're right in that there's not one single component that would kill those numbers... IT"S ALL OF THEM ADDED UP TOGETHER.
Your wonderful set of suggestions dropped the BOM down to $273. How many more corners and features are you going to have to cut to hit your numbers? And once you do, is the POS even worth buying? A plastic 5" tablet with an anemic processor, half the RAM needed to do anything, and no storage? Right. Ask Dell how well the Streak 5 sold...
(Oh yeah, add SD slot hardware and a controller chip to your BOM.)
And THAT'S only the BOM. Then it has to be shipped. Distributed. There's R&D, engineering, and development costs. Admin. Marketing. Patents, licensing, and legal. Recouping $1.2 billion in acquisition costs. Costs. Costs, and more costs. And that's before it's even in a store and the retailer marks it up yet again by another 10%. Then there are returns, damaged goods, shrinkage, and demo units.
30% profit? In your dreams. People look at the BOM and COGS and think, "Damn. They're making out like bandits."
Get a clue. To make ANY money selling a tablet at $149, your BOM would have to be less than $50. Good luck hitting that price point.