Best Buy wants HP to take their tablets back
You have to wonder what genius thought the HP TouchPad was a good idea in the first place. Competing with the iPad is something that even Android tablets are failing to do, even if they have better hardware and an at least somewhat competitive software selection. When HP then put yet another tablet on the market which can’t compete with either tablet for neither software nor hardware, it honestly wasn’t a long shot to predict it would fail miserably. That prediction has become reality and even with discounts left and right the thing simply isn’t selling.
Sources now tell AllThingsD that the US consumer electronics chain Best Buy has had it with the TouchPad and wants HP to take them back. Out of a stock of 270,000 units, only 25,000 have been sold – and that number might not even include returned units. Those are not good numbers, and you can’t blame Best Buy for not wanting to sit on 6 times as many units as they’ve sold just to hope they’ll become popular. Keep in mind that the TouchPad is brand new on the market, a time when actually popular products are sold out all over – as was the case with the EEE Transformer for a while, and which is still true for the iPad 2 in parts of the world (like here in Norway). It’s therefor unlikely tat sales will explode, even if there might be bundles offered now that schools start (HP does make lots of computers after all) or near the holiday season. I wouldn’t hold my breath though, and frankly I’ll be glad if the TouchPad disappears off the face of the planet. Competition is great for forcing companies to be innovative, but the TouchPad isn’t competition – it’s background noise. I’d rather see more consumer support for Honeycomb so that it becomes enough of a gold mine to bring it up to iPad levels of software and accessory support from third parties.
[AllThingsD]
