Harvey Norman urges HP to resurrect TouchPad

By David Binning on Aug 22, 2011 3:05 PM
Filed under Hardware

Feeding frenzy reveals the price tablets should have been all along.

Harvey Norman’s head of technology and communications will urge Hewlett Packard to reverse its decision to dump the struggling TouchPad following today’s national feeding frenzy after the retailer drastically dropped its price on the tablet.

Earlier today, Harvey Norman dropped the price of the 16 gigabyte TouchPad from $595 to $98 while dropping the 32GB model to $148.

It followed the retail giant’s decision last week to remove the devices from shelves following Hewlett Packard’s shock move to dump its poor performing tablet and smartphone businesses.

Harvey Norman’s head of computers and communications Ben McIntosh said he was surprised at the speed of the response, which led him to expect all 6000 of the devices in stock nationally to be sold by 3pm today.

By 2.15pm,Harvey Norman’s Chatswood and North Ryde stores in Sydney were sold out.

McIntosh said it inspired him to convince HP not to dump the product; he will call US executives in the next few hours as the country wakes up for business. “I will try to get the company [HP] to reconsider,” he said.

Despite TouchPad's original price being in the range of Apple's iPad 2, McIntosh said the feeding frenzy at Harvey Norman showed that HP had got its prices wrong.

“My message to HP was that we found out what the price needed to be all along.”

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Harvey Norman urges HP to resurrect TouchPad

9 comments in this discussion

"The other elephant in the room which hasn't been mentioned is how the public's perception of HP has changed in recent years. Other people also have commented about reliability issues, with ..."

By gnome

Tags

harvey norman, touchpad, apple, ipad 2, hewlett packard, hp

HP seeks local infosec staff

HP's cheap Slate 7 to reach Australia

CES 2013: Five companies you'd expect to see but won't

Harvey Norman hit by ACCC court action

Breaking Stories

8in Microsoft Surface Mini to launch this June

SAP boosts partner recruitment efforts for HANA

Microsoft Surface Pro vs Apple MacBook Air 11in

Dell's fiscal silver lining

Cisco Reports Strong 3Q

Comments: 9

dasuperham Aug 22, 2011 8:26 PM	I really hope that Harvey Norman is successful. as these touchpads are a great thing but not at the pricepoint that HP were aiming for. they would be alot better off selling the pads at the liquidated price and focus on the software market for the pads.
ewhizzdotnet Aug 22, 2011 8:44 PM	Just goes to show that Harvey Norman execs are as equally clueless as HP was with its underestimation of the market penetration of the iPad…..though HP are at least cutting their losses now… As if, Harvey Norman will be able to convince HP to turn this (sinking!) ship around. And come one…. they are already making a loss on these at the original price, let alone at the 75% runout price.
adamson Aug 23, 2011 10:45 AM	To be quoted in print saying something like that - some people have no shame, and he's only young :)
SteveO Aug 23, 2011 1:32 PM	Don't the harvey norman execs get it? HP has abandoned this product and are actually making a substantial loss because of this firesale. I somehow doubt they would want to continue to pain by selling further units of something that costs upwards of $300 to make for just $99 ... The problem HP faced is that they backed a loser - webOS - it just doesn't have the legs that the Android and iOS (Apple) OSes have.
SteveO Aug 23, 2011 1:36 PM	The alternative view is that HP may see some merit in rapidly gaining marketshare, albeit at a cost per new customer of something like $200 per unit!
ChrisE Aug 24, 2011 5:44 PM	Harvey Norman, what a joke. No different to a doctor urging everybody to catch a disease.
Chris ITL Aug 25, 2011 11:22 AM	I guess the horse has bolted already ... and given that the new CEO looks to be a one trick pony (turn HP into SAP because that is what he knows - good luck with that) HP may have been able to use a Game Console like strategy - sell the hardware at a loss and make the money off the software ecosystem. And drive down the cost of producing the product as quickly as possible. Of course there would have to be a critical mass that would need to be reached and it would be a long time before HP could claw back the $200.00 loss on moving the products given that apps are usually pretty cheap. And the consoles have the benefit of long life cycles without having to change specs. Which you could not do with tablets. But I see that as the only way that someone is going to challenge the iPad and Android clones at this stage of the game. Take a loss on hardware, create a robust ecosystem, grab market share, improve the software, allow the reseller channel to sell and evangelise the whole thing, leverage their enterprise market space to get them in the hands of businesses and they may have been able to make a go of it. The market is obviously there for someone to sell good quality hardware at a cost point where it makes it very compelling to not pass up. But it is going to take some balls and HP doesn't have it anymore. But then ... who does?
SteveO Aug 26, 2011 12:55 PM	If push came to shove and it became a 'race to the bottom' of prices for high quality tablets, then there's probably only a handful of companies who have the balls and the cash to do it for an extended period - Google, Apple and (possibly) Amazon. I don't think consumer electronic focused companies like Samsung or Acer would want to get into that sort of battle.
gnome Aug 26, 2011 6:22 PM	The other elephant in the room which hasn't been mentioned is how the public's perception of HP has changed in recent years. Other people also have commented about reliability issues, with customers unhappy with various aspects including software. Not exactly a good start to launch a new device.