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."
Maybe they should just make them (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, I was against their pulling out of the PC and handheld markets. I was also against their buying Compaq to begin with. The more players out there, the more competition and innovation. With fewer players, we'll see a reduction in quality and an increase in prices. I think HP shouldn't walk away from an entire business like that. They should hire in some great engineers and great management and make a go of it, not just surrender and withdraw.
Re:Maybe they should just make them (Score:5, Insightful)
if there's demand for your product, keep making it.
I'm not sure that works if the reason for the demand is that you're selling it at a huge loss without any business model to recoup the loss.
Re:What's wrong with HP (Score:4, Insightful)
Or 4) They liquidated their assembled units but still had remaining parts not usable for anything else. To liquidate said parts, it's easier to sell assembled units at well below cost than to try and sell the parts piecemeal.
Re:Maybe they should just make them (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably they have stockpiles of things like cases or screens or other components that they want to run down. If the cost of assembling the parts into tablets is less than the $99 they can get for them (which it almost certainly is) - then it may just be cheaper to assemble and sell them rather than scrapping all of those parts.
Re:Maybe they should just make them (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why would you make another run at a loss after you were sold out?
Couple of potential reasons that aren't completely stupid:
1: Stockpile of unassembled / partly assembled components that they couldn't find some other company to buy in the last couple of weeks. and
2: Expensive to exit contract(s) with one or more companies at some levels of the manufacturing layers (component suppliers, final assembly provider).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe they should just make them (Score:5, Insightful)
However, this does prove EXACTLY how stupid HP is, if they killed it so quickly without knowing about 1 or 2 (whichever it was, if not both.) As for being "stunned" at the response--really? I mean, they got lukewarm reviews, but everyone said they were decent devices, and HP could have EASILY sold all of their stock at about $249 each*, and not looked quite so much like chickens with their heads cut off while doing so. The only message the $99 price sent was "We want out of this fucking business TODAY."
And in case anyone is wondering why HP is doing what they're doing, read this. [wsj.com] Very nice one-page summary from the Wall Street Journal.
* $499: no sales. $449: no sales. $399: no sales. $99: SOLD OUT IN HOURS. Maybe there's a reasonable (though still not profitable) middle ground there somewhere...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)