Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of HP Tablets | Hacker News Reader

Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of HP Tablets

allthingsd.com

HP should just give a tablet away to anyone who signs up to be a developer even if it is a back door for consumers to get a nearly free tablet. Maybe even put the free tablet at the end of an Ares tutorial [1].

It's a little late for a back to school bundle sale. At this point we might see TouchPads go for insane prices on Black Friday. But that's still a couple months away.

HP needs to be more aggressive about give aways. Google has been giving away Android devices to thousands if not tens of thousands of people. This excess stock is a pretty good opportunity to get devices in the right hands.

[1] http://ares.palm.com/Ares/about.html

I wonder if sales of these devices are slow in part because of the OS it runs on. Everything cool in mobile seems to be either Android or iOS. If developers don't do webOS, there aren't going to be killer apps for it. And apps sell devices.

I've always wondered how valid the 'apps sell devices' theory is. In the 80s/90s, I think it had merit as you bought a computer for the capabilities provided by the apps. But I look at the apps on my phone (WP7) and with the exception of games, a fitness tracker and some photo editing apps, I don't have anything that couldn't be run in the browser. I'd go so far to say that I often find myself on a web page and then realize that I've got an app that does offers the same functionality.

Browser, email, maps, media player are the killer apps, and every device has them. I think games is the downfall of some devices.

Blackberry Playbook not having an email client, that I would call an app that would prevent a sale, but does anybody really look at the app catalog and say to themselves "if it hasn't got angry birds, I'm not buying it"?

I've played with webOS, and I wasn't wowed, but anybody I know who as owned a webOS device (and has had both Android and iOS) are adamant that it is the best OS experience out there.

I think the big deal is the pricing.

You simply can't bring a competing platform against the ipad and not compete on price if you don't have anything else to offer.

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