facebook rss twitter

HP TouchPad available from July, starting at £399

by Scott Bicheno on 9 June 2011, 14:26

Tags: Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa6ck

Add to My Vault: x

Touch and go

If you doubt how much the tablet market is completely dictated by Apple right now, check out the price of all the others. With some minor variations they all match Apple's pricing exactly, and now HP has joined the herd.

HP announced the UK pricing and availability of the Wi-Fi version its TouchPad tablet today and - drum-roll please - the 16GB version will cost £399, while the 32GB one will cost £479. This is exactly the same price as, not only the iPad 2, but the Motorola Xoom and the BlackBerry PlayBook.

The novel thing about HP's offering is the platform. HP bought Palm over a year ago, promising to incorporate the crown-jewel webOS platform into all kinds of devices, but they've been pretty thin on the ground so far. The TouchPad is the biggest launch since the acquisition, and gives people the chance to see how webOS measures up to Apple, Android, etc in the booming tablet market.

"What makes HP TouchPad a compelling alternative to competing products is webOS," said Jon Rubinstein, boss of Palm at HP. "The platform's unmatched features and flexibility will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use. This is only the beginning of what HP's scale can do with webOS."

While the TouchPad will be available in the US, France and Germany  on 1 July, we'll have to wait until the middle of the month for our go. We will be able to pre-order it from 19 June, but no specific retailers have been named.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
To me £399 is a bit pricey for what is merely a single-user device, I'd kind of hoped that they'd undercut the iPad's to get some market share.

Hopefully there's some substantial employee discounts available, because I think I'd really like one if it was cheaper.
Been waiting over a year for this, and what do we get?

No 3G. Ok, you can ‘touch’ your Pre3, but I'm still waiting for one of them too.
No sd card slot, of any size, at all.
No bulk storage mode on USB, so no bloody use at all on a Linux desktop

Sorry, Palm, Sorry HP. This is a bitter dissapointment, and charging the iPod price when it's probably not finished, and the app store is definitely still in nappies is just extracting the urine.

Why on earth, having waited this long for the miserable thing, have you let me down so badly?
bobharvey
No 3G. Ok, you can ‘touch’ your Pre3, but I'm still waiting for one of them too.
No sd card slot, of any size, at all.
No bulk storage mode on USB, so no bloody use at all on a Linux desktop
Pre3 - yes, I wondered where that'd got to, although there's some online retailers advertising it for shipping.
SD card slot omission surprised me too - I assume that they're just trying to ape the iPad. Either that, or they figure that the management types the TP is aimed at would lose an SD card! ;)
Linux connection - leave that with me, I'm sure I've seen someone commenting on that on the internal forums. I'll check back with them and see what the deal is.
bobharvey
Sorry, Palm, Sorry HP. This is a bitter dissapointment, and charging the iPod price when it's probably not finished, and the app store is definitely still in nappies is just extracting the urine.
Agreed 100% - although (reputedly) the OS is more complete than Android 3.0 is. I really would have like to see the ability to run Android apps, like the Blackberry pad reputedly can, as this strikes me as a great way to flexibility.
crossy
To me £399 is a bit pricey for what is merely a single-user device, I'd kind of hoped that they'd undercut the iPad's to get some market share.

Hopefully there's some substantial employee discounts available, because I think I'd really like one if it was cheaper.

The danger with undercutting the iPad on price is in becoming a cheap iPad as far as consumers are concerned. HP want the Touchpad to be considered an equal (or superior) to the iPad in consumer perception terms, not the cheapo own-brand equivalent.
bobharvey
No 3G. Ok, you can ‘touch’ your Pre3, but I'm still waiting for one of them too.

The 3G model isn't ready yet. It's due in an extra couple of months.

As for the Pre 3, I expect the release date to be made public before the Touchpad ships.