40 ms·

After firesale, now HP Touchpads get 6 free apps from HP

41 points by karteek 15y ago

mattmiller 15y ago
A part of me thinks that this is whole thing is a marketing gimmick to create a bunch of touchpad fans.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Of course it is. The question is: Will it work?
  - dpio 15y ago
    I hope so.
  - mattmiller 15y ago
    They got me. The touchpad is pretty cool.
- notatoad 15y ago
  not to create touchpad fans, the touchpad is dead. it's about creating webos fans. what they're doing with the firesale and now with the apps is increasing the value of the platform so they can sell or license it for a higher price
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    That's a rather clever salvage plan. I would not have thought to try that.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Apotheker wants to make his stupid plan of turning HP into a software company look brilliant. It's not. Building tablets is more profitable than licensing WebOS will ever be. Who'll want it when Android has far more apps available and a very low licensing cost? Even if they manage to extract $12 per device sold, they will have to sell 100 million of them to recover Palm's acquisition cost alone. This is lunacy. I love WebOS, but this is a very bad plan.
r00fus 15y ago
To me, this smacks of Palm just continuing executing in spite of Corporate's (ie, Apotheker's) decisive move. Good for Palm.
jeffclark 15y ago
It's strange. $99 firesale, new TouchPads in the hands of a bunch of nerds, show off some "good" (not not "great") apps by giving them away. I kinda hope it's all marketing hype. But now I want decent, functioning apps for this thing. I created a legit WebOS app for myself in about 30 minutes. The development of these apps are unbelievably quick since it's just HTML/CSS/JS. Your entire dev environment is a text editor, a WebKit browser and the inspection pane - the same one built into Chrome/Safari/Whathaveyou. It'd be a shame to see WebOS completely die off.
- JLW 15y ago
  Sadly it's starting to look that way
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- barkingcat 15y ago
  Did you create your app before or after you heard about HP killing the platform off? If it was after, what made you not develop any apps when the platform was viable? This would be a great postmortem question for the HP team - if they had such a compelling development platform, why didn't anyone want to make the effort before they killed the entire thing?
  - jeffclark 15y ago
    After. The only reason I didn't create one before was because I didn't think the platform had enough users to make the ROI on learning how to program for WebOS worth it.
    - barkingcat 15y ago
      So now that you know how easy it is to learn to program for webos (html / css/ js) - would the # of users it takes to make the ROI be reduced by enough such that it's ok to sell to an extremely small market? ie. Since it's so easy to develop for, you will spend very little time/effort/money to learn to develop vs the iphone (which involves apis, objective c, etc) or vs the android (which involves java, etc) - and so it's ok that the market is small, because you can sell less copies to recoup the investment outlay (which was smaller to begin with because of the ease of development). Does that change the value proposition of the touchpad? If it does, then this points to a marketing failure on HP's part - they had a perfectly fine product - just needed to get past the initial "knowledge gap" when no one knows anything about the product.
diminish 15y ago
i am curious now how much share this firesale gives the touchpad got in q3 2011.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Quick guess: Best Buy had 270,000 unsold units. Assuming they have 10% of all the market, there would be now 2.7 million Touchpads out there. All Pre 3 inventory in Europe will get sold the same way.
  - Raphael 15y ago
    "HP’s initial order from its Taiwanese contract manufacturer, Compal, was for between 500,000 and one million units." http://allthingsd.com/20110822/how-much-did-hp-lose-on-the-touchpad-heres-a-good-guess/ http://allthingsd.com/20110822/how-much-did-hp-lose-on-the-t...
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      So, best buy had more than 50% of the lot? That's surprising.
  - base 15y ago
    Is there a store in Europe with this cheap touchpads?
angryasian 15y ago
received message that promo codes were no longer valid because of exceeded usage. sent from HP Touchpad
- dustyreagan 15y ago
  I got the same message.
- watty 15y ago
  same - I was really excited about Sparkle and Big Boss. Apparently they've been dead since last night. They succeeded in getting me to put in my credit card info too!
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - badkins 15y ago
    I got these last night. Sparkle and big boss are lame, but I'm not a fan of touchscreen games. Glimpse is the best of the pack. The camera app sounds like a good idea, but is really useless except for taking a picture of yourself.
- gravitronic 15y ago
  Reminds me of a similar let down when a certain tablet computer was sold at a ridiculously low price and quickly became impossible to obtain...
- sjs382 15y ago
  Same... :-(
dustyreagan 15y ago
You have to put a credit card on file to use the promocodes. So, they've just made it much easier for users to impulsively buy other apps in the future, and they've shown people how to use the app store. Not a bad marketing plan! Personally I planned on making zero webOS app purchases in anticipation of installing Android. But now that my CC is on file, I'll probably have Angry Birds on here by the end of the month. :p
- conradev 15y ago
  Angry Birds is free ;P
  - dustyreagan 15y ago
    Oh! Nice! I may be able to stick to my plan after all then! :)
conradev 15y ago
"Eligibility Requirements: US-based HP employees, HP reseller partners, HP customers and HP webOS developer partners are eligible to use these App Promo codes. Promo participants require a TouchPad with a current functioning user profile; with credit card purchasing enabled. The promo codes below will expire on August 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM. Promo codes are available for as long as inventories last." The codes are invalid, it seems that, according to the last sentence, the inventory has run out. Why HP, why?
- watty 15y ago
  Because they just wanted you to enter your credit card information!
  - conradev 15y ago
    I already had mine entered >_>
brackin 15y ago
Wow, 6 apps!
phillijw 15y ago
I wonder if a viable business model would work where the first 1000 people pay $25, the next 1000 pay $50, the next pay $75, etc, etc (obviously the math would have to be investigated further). You'd have to order online for it to work I think but it would be an interesting way to get people lined up immediately. Although since they killed Palm Pre 1 (no more updates) they sort of killed my interest in buying any more of their products

41 points by karteek 15y ago

mattmiller 15y ago

A part of me thinks that this is whole thing is a marketing gimmick to create a bunch of touchpad fans.

wccrawford 15y ago
Of course it is. The question is: Will it work?
- dpio 15y ago
  I hope so.
- mattmiller 15y ago
  They got me. The touchpad is pretty cool.
notatoad 15y ago
not to create touchpad fans, the touchpad is dead. it's about creating webos fans. what they're doing with the firesale and now with the apps is increasing the value of the platform so they can sell or license it for a higher price
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  That's a rather clever salvage plan. I would not have thought to try that.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Apotheker wants to make his stupid plan of turning HP into a software company look brilliant. It's not. Building tablets is more profitable than licensing WebOS will ever be. Who'll want it when Android has far more apps available and a very low licensing cost? Even if they manage to extract $12 per device sold, they will have to sell 100 million of them to recover Palm's acquisition cost alone. This is lunacy. I love WebOS, but this is a very bad plan.

r00fus 15y ago

To me, this smacks of Palm just continuing executing in spite of Corporate's (ie, Apotheker's) decisive move. Good for Palm.

jeffclark 15y ago

It's strange. $99 firesale, new TouchPads in the hands of a bunch of nerds, show off some "good" (not not "great") apps by giving them away. I kinda hope it's all marketing hype. But now I want decent, functioning apps for this thing. I created a legit WebOS app for myself in about 30 minutes. The development of these apps are unbelievably quick since it's just HTML/CSS/JS. Your entire dev environment is a text editor, a WebKit browser and the inspection pane - the same one built into Chrome/Safari/Whathaveyou. It'd be a shame to see WebOS completely die off.

JLW 15y ago
Sadly it's starting to look that way
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
barkingcat 15y ago
Did you create your app before or after you heard about HP killing the platform off? If it was after, what made you not develop any apps when the platform was viable? This would be a great postmortem question for the HP team - if they had such a compelling development platform, why didn't anyone want to make the effort before they killed the entire thing?
- jeffclark 15y ago
  After. The only reason I didn't create one before was because I didn't think the platform had enough users to make the ROI on learning how to program for WebOS worth it.
  - barkingcat 15y ago
    So now that you know how easy it is to learn to program for webos (html / css/ js) - would the # of users it takes to make the ROI be reduced by enough such that it's ok to sell to an extremely small market? ie. Since it's so easy to develop for, you will spend very little time/effort/money to learn to develop vs the iphone (which involves apis, objective c, etc) or vs the android (which involves java, etc) - and so it's ok that the market is small, because you can sell less copies to recoup the investment outlay (which was smaller to begin with because of the ease of development). Does that change the value proposition of the touchpad? If it does, then this points to a marketing failure on HP's part - they had a perfectly fine product - just needed to get past the initial "knowledge gap" when no one knows anything about the product.

diminish 15y ago

i am curious now how much share this firesale gives the touchpad got in q3 2011.

rbanffy 15y ago
Quick guess: Best Buy had 270,000 unsold units. Assuming they have 10% of all the market, there would be now 2.7 million Touchpads out there. All Pre 3 inventory in Europe will get sold the same way.
- Raphael 15y ago
  "HP’s initial order from its Taiwanese contract manufacturer, Compal, was for between 500,000 and one million units." http://allthingsd.com/20110822/how-much-did-hp-lose-on-the-touchpad-heres-a-good-guess/ http://allthingsd.com/20110822/how-much-did-hp-lose-on-the-t...
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    So, best buy had more than 50% of the lot? That's surprising.
- base 15y ago
  Is there a store in Europe with this cheap touchpads?

angryasian 15y ago

received message that promo codes were no longer valid because of exceeded usage. sent from HP Touchpad

dustyreagan 15y ago
I got the same message.
watty 15y ago
same - I was really excited about Sparkle and Big Boss. Apparently they've been dead since last night. They succeeded in getting me to put in my credit card info too!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- badkins 15y ago
  I got these last night. Sparkle and big boss are lame, but I'm not a fan of touchscreen games. Glimpse is the best of the pack. The camera app sounds like a good idea, but is really useless except for taking a picture of yourself.
gravitronic 15y ago
Reminds me of a similar let down when a certain tablet computer was sold at a ridiculously low price and quickly became impossible to obtain...
sjs382 15y ago
Same... :-(

dustyreagan 15y ago

You have to put a credit card on file to use the promocodes. So, they've just made it much easier for users to impulsively buy other apps in the future, and they've shown people how to use the app store. Not a bad marketing plan! Personally I planned on making zero webOS app purchases in anticipation of installing Android. But now that my CC is on file, I'll probably have Angry Birds on here by the end of the month. :p

conradev 15y ago
Angry Birds is free ;P
- dustyreagan 15y ago
  Oh! Nice! I may be able to stick to my plan after all then! :)

conradev 15y ago

"Eligibility Requirements: US-based HP employees, HP reseller partners, HP customers and HP webOS developer partners are eligible to use these App Promo codes. Promo participants require a TouchPad with a current functioning user profile; with credit card purchasing enabled. The promo codes below will expire on August 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM. Promo codes are available for as long as inventories last." The codes are invalid, it seems that, according to the last sentence, the inventory has run out. Why HP, why?

watty 15y ago
Because they just wanted you to enter your credit card information!
- conradev 15y ago
  I already had mine entered >_>

brackin 15y ago

Wow, 6 apps!

phillijw 15y ago

I wonder if a viable business model would work where the first 1000 people pay $25, the next 1000 pay $50, the next pay $75, etc, etc (obviously the math would have to be investigated further). You'd have to order online for it to work I think but it would be an interesting way to get people lined up immediately. Although since they killed Palm Pre 1 (no more updates) they sort of killed my interest in buying any more of their products