Just when we thought the $99 Hewlett-Packard TouchPad was gone forever, the tablet that refuses to die is coming back for one last sale, according to online reports. A limited quantity of refurbished TouchPads will reportedly go on sale at HP's eBay Store starting at 6 p.m. US Central Time (7 p.m. Eastern) on Sunday, December 11.
The future of webOS has been hazy since HP announced in August that it will discontinue its webOS line of devices. The HP Veer 4G faded into oblivion, but the HP TouchPad has enjoyed numerous fire sales since the announcement. Today, HP announced that webOS will live on as an open source platform.
HP announced today that it will "contribute" its webOS operating system to the <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/opensource/">open source</a> community.
A little birdie (The Verge) revealed earlier today that HP's new CEO Meg Whitman had scheduled an all-hands meeting for the WebOS crew. The news sparked speculation that HP had perhaps found a suitor for the mobile platform, but those predictions turned up false.
Were you one of the lucky Australian consumers to get your hands on HP's TouchPad tablet for $98 yesterday?
Everyone who’s been grabbing the $99 and $149 HP TouchPads in the recent fire sale might not be stuck with HP's webOS.
Perhaps you've heard that the HP TouchPad tablet has suffered an untimely demise? There are a lot of lessons that rival tablet vendors can learn from the death of the TouchPad (and the feeding frenzy it created in its wake). More importantly, though, the loss of the TouchPad creates a prime opportunity for a tablet like the BlackBerry PlayBook.
Consumers are going absolutely crazy for HP's touchpad thanks to the recent fire sale pricing of $99. The tablet sells out at stores across the country faster than stores can pull them off the trucks. On eBay, the tablets are being sold for upwards of $300.
WebOS wasn't really a bad operating system; it just never really had a purpose.
The TouchPad may be DOA thanks to HP's recent decision to drop WebOS but you wouldn't know it from the prices the tablet fetches on eBay. After fire sales over the weekend dropped the price of the entry level 16gb TouchPad model down to $99, demand for the tablet skyrocketed and retailers quickly sold out of the TouchPad. Now TouchPads on eBay are fetching somewhere between $200 and $300 for resellers.
Hewlett-Packard may be giving up on making webOS devices such as the Pre 3 and Veer smartphones and TouchPad tablet, but executives at the company say committed to developing its mobile platform. HP appears convinced it can wring some value from the mobile OS it picked up after purchasing Palm last year for $1.2 billion.
Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Best Buy are facing a backlash from wannabe HP TouchPad buyers after each of the retailers oversold their supplies of the WebOS-based tablets. B&N is facing the brunt of angry customers with many disgruntled TouchPad bargain hunters taking to social networks to speak their mind.
Taking advantage of Hewlett-Packard's departure from the tablet and smartphone market, Microsoft has offered webOS developers free phones, tools and training to create apps for its Windows Phone 7 platform.
News is spreading quickly online that HP is going to clear out the vast TouchPad inventory by dropping the price to an offer you can't refuse.
HP has announced the local availability of its new webOS-powered TouchPad tablet PC with Harvey Norman set to offer the device from August 15 starting at $599.