Why The Undead $99 TouchPad Might Portend The iPad's Doom

Give me a break.

This is horribly poor reporting and speculation for Forbes.

HP is almost literally giving these things away, and it took a $99 price point before anyone gave 2 shits about it. From the comments I've seen online, these are being purchased by geeks to "hack" on, people who think they're getting a deal, and consumers to uneducated to understand they are basically purchasing a very expensive paperweight. None of these demographics are Apple's core business.

Additionally, there is no evidence that a loss-leader style tablet market has much merit, the one possible exception being Amazon since they have a reseller ecosystem setup that can rival Apple in some cases.

All this whole HP tablet giveaway really says right now is that WebOS, Android, Blackberry, etc. have not been able to create a device as elegant, compelling and profitable as the iPad.

Apple created the tablet market, and now everything that comes out is compared to it on all aspects. Consumers are trained to expect something both better and cheaper as the next thing, and so far that product has not emerged.