HP’s TouchPad tablet could go on sale this June for a starting price of $699, according to a report in sfgate.com.That’s high, but not outrageous. It’s $100 cheaper than the latest rumored prices for Motorola’s upcoming Xoom, which which runs Google’s Android 3.0 “Honeycomb.”
HP has a distribution edge over Motorola thanks to its huge retail footprint - the company’s computers and printers already occupy about 8% of all shelf space at consumer electronics retailers. The tablets are also competitive on specs and look and feel surprisingly similar - perhaps because a lot of Android folks originally came from Palm, which created the WebOS operating system that HP is using on the TouchPad. However, Android has far more apps - a problem that HP is trying to fix by releasing WebOS on PCs later this year.
The real competitor in the space is Apple’s iPad, which starts at $499. Apple is reportedly due to release an iPad successor as early as March, and if the iPhone is any guide, the low-end version will have a dramatic price drop. HP is going to have a hard time competing with that. HP’s TouchPad tablet could go on sale this June for a starting price of $699, according to a report in sfgate.com.That’s high, but not outrageous. It’s $100 cheaper than the latest rumored prices for Motorola’s upcoming Xoom, which which runs Google’s Android 3.0 “Honeycomb.”
HP has a distribution edge over Motorola thanks to its huge retail footprint - the company’s computers and printers already occupy about 8% of all shelf space at consumer electronics retailers. The tablets are also competitive on specs and look and feel surprisingly similar - perhaps because a lot of Android folks originally came from Palm, which created the WebOS operating system that HP is using on the TouchPad. However, Android has far more apps - a problem that HP is trying to fix by releasing WebOS on PCs later this year. The real competitor in the space is Apple’s iPad, which starts at $499. Apple is reportedly due to release an iPad successor as early as March, and if the iPhone is any guide, the low-end version will have a dramatic price drop. HP is going to have a hard time competing with that.
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