$99 HP TouchPad Sale: Other Companies Need to Slash Prices to Compete, Says Tech Expert

By Allison Summers, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Companies competing with the hit $99 HP TouchPad that has consumers vying for the last devices are going to have to do much more than improve the quality of their tablets; they are going to have to mark down their prices as well, according to Technorati.com.

The TouchPad, which went on a fire sale this summer after HP announced it was to be discontinued, has customers scrambling to snatch up the last of the units after the company agreed to release an extra 200,000 TouchPads at the end of October to meet consumer demands. At $99, HP dropped the price of the TouchPad a whopping 80 percent from its starting price of $500.

According to Technorati.com, while it may seem apparent that the skyrocketing sales of the TouchPad are due to HP's extreme price cut, it appears the quality of unit is also having an equally significant effect on sales. Before the prices had gone down, it reached number one and two on Amazon's top electronics list at $399 and $499.

While HP would never be able to sustain the TouchPad at $99 over a substantial amount of time, as it is currently selling for a fraction of what it costs to make, the move would have ultimately helped the company if it had chosen to slash prices for a short time when it first began selling units. The popularity of of the iPad makes it difficult for any other tablet to compete at the same price, as according to Bloomberg.com, the iPad is expected to account for 83 percent of tablet computer sales in the U.S. this year.

However, the Kindle Fire is expected to do extremely well because it does what other tablet producers have failed to do, Technorati.com stated. The Kindle Fire is a quality tablet with hardware that can compete with other companies, yet the price is at a fraction of what most tablets today are selling for. Over a five-day span, pre-orders have been estimated at 250,000.