I'm a little saddened today as I watch every single website and big box retailer sell out of their HP Touchpads at $99 a pop. I'm even more sad- and a tad angry, because it means that the tablet wars are going in the same direction as the cell phone wars have- leading to a big war between Apple and Android. Not that we couldn't see that coming from 50 miles away, but I like to root for the underdog- especially when the underdog has a great product that's overshadowed by the "majority rules" thinking by those who think they know the tech world. Seriously, when's the last time you've seen a retailer give a non Android/Apple device decent floor space, or even the last time one of them has talked up a Windows or WebOS phone? But I digress.
Long story short, HP's decision to ax the Touchpad after 49 days was a bad one. Here are a few things they could have done differently.
1: Back To School Tie In
With school just around the corner, HP should have taken advantage of the buzz around tablets and colleges and taken a page from Apple's book. For years, Apple offered an iPod with the purchase of a computer during Back To School season. While making a $500 tablet a free tie in would be stupid, HP should have turned it into a way to reduce the price and get the tablet some much needed word-of-mouth publicity. If a student buys a laptop whose base price is $XXX or more, they can throw in a Touchpad for just a mere $200 or $300. College students are impressionable, and for each student that has something, they're bound to run into 100 students who at least give it a second glance.
2. What About The Phone?
HP's WebOS platform was actually cool. Although their phones were too small for me, some of the things they could do were pretty awesome. Like Blackberry phones and tablets, HP's mobile front had the ability to communicate, something that iOS and Android haven't done (or at least marketed) effectively. WebOS tablets, like Blackberry's, could notify you when your phone was ringing, but WebOS could also share things between the phone and tablet by placing the phone on top of the tablet. For example, if you have a webpage pulled up on your tablet and need to leave it behind, you could place the phone on the tablet, and it would pull up the website on the phone. Pretty neat stuff. iPads sell because their commercials show what the product can really do; I wish they had based their commercials off some of the tablet's cooler technology rather than have Lea Michele and Russell Brand hawk the basic features that come on every tablet.
3. Sell it at $99 initially
Yes, I typed that right. Bear with me here. Companies are incredibly focused on the bottom line nowadays, but you really can't do that when you're entering a brand new market with stiff competition. For example, when 2K Sports geared up to put out NFL 2K5, they notices that they were losing market share to Madden. So what did they do? They one upped Madden on just about every possible facet of the game, including an ESPN license and a cool camera perspective where gamers could control a player by only seeing what the players see- through the facemask. But the biggest thing they did? The game was only $20, compared to Madden's $50. Dropping an Andrew Jackson on the game was a far smaller investment, and it got 2K Sports some publicity and exposure, which is what you need more than anything when entering a new market. Those first couple of years, the bottom line should not be so important. 2K Sports got out of the game, however, when EA Sports went and got the exclusive NFL license, making them the only show in town, not because of sales. If HP sold the Touchpad at an introductory price of $99, or even at $199, they would have gotten some serious publicity. All the "deals" sites would have carried the ad, and even if buyers were late coming to the party, the word of mouth from the initial sale would have been monstrous.
Fire selling their tablet at $99, HP has only confirmed that the tablet wars are about to seriously change. Android tablets aren't selling that hot, and they may have to undercut themselves to boost sales. We'll see what happens soon, but HP's decision to kill off their tablet (and their phones, for that matter) was, for lack of a better word, stupid.
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