Why is HP producing now more TouchPads? | Hacker News Reader

Why is HP producing now more TouchPads?

i4u.com

15 pointsluigionline7 comments

It's an excellent question. An article that actually had an ANSWER to the question would be quite interesting. This article has nothing more than some speculation that perhaps HP has a bunch of parts inventory to get rid of, which is admitted to be nothing but speculation.

My personal opinion is that the senior management at HP is trying to find the fastest and most effective way to destroy the company, and they belatedly realized that selling tablets at a significant loss per unit was even MORE effective at that goal than getting out of the business that the company has mastered in hopes of out-IBM'ing IBM.

It seems to me they disrupted the market with a limited $99 firesale, got some mindshare of customers, and may not have been wanting to kill it after all.

There's an article out there that said HP wanted to be the #2 tablet company after iPad and they did it with the firesale.. lol.

sure, we're losing money on each unit, but we'll make it up in volume.

I've heard the supplier argument because, but I think perhaps it's because Samsung may be interested in buying it, to escape Apple litigation (along with the PC division). Easy to sell as a going concern. But the simplest explanation is: today's HP is stupid.

From the America version of The Office:

Oscar: I don't see how we can possibly sell these for that little without losing money. Delivery alone will cost--

Michael Scott: OK well sometimes, sometimes, it makes financial sense to lose money, right? Like for tax purposes?

Oscar: Actually, I ran the numbers on this, and in this case, it makes financial sense to gain, money.

What's really concerning about the supplier argument is that it would illustrate reckless management action. Running a company like HP, how can you not understand the impact of supplier contracts on canceling a product line? That would practically define the euphamism, "Asleep at the wheel".

Interesting that the author asks the question about how many were sold, and then mentions a few hundred. We already know that at least 5 digit values of TouchPads were sold before the great unraveling of HP, and now that number is no doubt into the hundreds of thousands, judging by demand and ad impressions (as well as the download numbers on my webOS app).

As near as I can tell from all this, there is no longer a way to sign up to be notified by email of availability. (I.e. the only people who will be emailed are those who already signed up some time ago, presumably during the first round of the fire sale.)

If this is incorrect, can someone point me to the instructions to sign up for email notification?

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