Wow, how crazy has  the life of the HP touchpad been since the launch. The webOS tablet first had a $50 price drop, then $100. Then HP killed the hardware. Now they are doing a fire sale which made the 16 GB version $99 and the 32 GB $150.
Oh, and a lot of people wanted their money back (for jumping in the ship and being early adopters),  which created a huge mess for all trying to get  the refund.
My head is spinning with so much crazy stuff going on.
Anyway, a few months ago I had this conversation about the iPad in  which I said that nobody wants tablets because they are not necessary. They wanted the iPad because they are (want to be) cool.
Since then, I have seeing a lot of articles saying that people prefer the iPad which  confirms that there isn’t a tablet market, there is an iPad market.
Ipad vs. HP Touchpad vs. The rest
The only way to compete with the ipad is in the price. Apple is the creator, they are the cool company, they have a gazillion apps, and the basic version of the iPad is $500. Why will you buy anything else for that price?
The competitors should have done something drastic with the price and in that case I thought HP was the only company capable of doing that. They are the only competitor who controls the apps and the hardware Ă la Apple.
This allows them to play in the long whole and while they are making no money when it comes to the hardware they will hopefully recover the money by  the apps and in other services like subscription and eventually licensing.
Now, with the all the frenzy about the cheap tablet we can say that HP is the living  proof of that. It may not be the best business model, but it’s probably the only way of beating Apple in sales numbers.
This certainly cannot be done by Android vendors. The other competitor I’m seeing that could do that is Amazon, but their tablet isn’t even for sale yet or right now, unless HTC wants to buy webOS from HP.
If HP had done that from the beginning, the story of the HP Touchpad could have been different. Who knows?
Right now the only certainty is that HP Â lost a lot of money in this mess. The costs to build each HP Touchpad is huge and they are losing a lot in each sale, although it’s way less than not selling it at all.
User base
Building that initial user base was a great step to attract the developers. Now if that happens and the apps grow, then the users will (probably) come to if there is a hardware for sale. Only assumptions since we don’t know what will happen to webOS or to the HP Touchpad.
Long live webOS… or not
The future of webOS is doomed, but there’s still a light at the end of the tunnel. The HP touchpad is sold out on in every online website and there is a huge waiting list already.
Knowing that HP has ordered 500 to a million initial HP touchpad units, it’s a good sign that webOS may still live for a while. They built a reasonable initial market which  didn’t exist only a week ago. Hopefully, the developers will finally start creating more apps and some vendors will create exited about it.
Conclusion
With all of this, here are the questions that will be answered during the next few months:
- Would HP license the webOS?
- If yes, would any other company try to create a webOS tablet?
- Will the developers jump in?
We are going to get some answers soon. In the mean time, I’ll take advantage of the offer  and test this hyped tablet out by doing basic online stuff with it.  I just hope HP continues supporting the OS and there are some more new apps coming in soon!
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