HP TouchPad's second wave may be taken by existing orders
updated 06:30 pm EDT, Wed September 7, 2011
HP on track to ramp up & deliver by end of October
HP’s Small and Medium Business division has sent out an e-mail to its customers who had placed an orders but had not received shipment of the company's now discontinued TouchPad. HP has told these customers that it will begin fulfilling their orders, at the promised discounted price of as little as $99, in about six to eight weeks. The email was directed at SMB customers only and does not apply to customers who might have unfulfilled orders from the regular home channel.
The timeframe indicates that the company would be fulfilling these orders by the end of October, which is consistent with the company's stated intent of shipping a new batch of units by the end of HP's current fiscal quarter, which ends on October 31.
HP has not revealed the number of unfulfilled orders it has for the webOS tablet, but it is believed that the company or its suppliers had enough parts or inventory on hand to build at least 100,000 TouchPad Gos, which share many of the same components on top of full-size models. The company has faced calls from suppliers to clean out its pipeline. [via PreCentral]
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2010
This will put a damper on Android sales
Given that outside of Google loving tech people the people buying Android tablets are the non-loyal price senstive consumers. Those people will wait off for the now well publicised 'cheap as chips' HP Touchpad (with Android hack) to bereleased and those same people don't mind waiting the 6-8 weeks to pick up a bargain. This will mean many of the other Android tablets will sit on the shelves...which is something the Android OEM's can ill afford. Funnily enough, most of the Touchpads are already accounted for so those hoping to pick one up will be in vane.