Wal-Mart to carry TouchPad, 32GB set at $599 [exclusive]
HP's distribution advantage over some other tablet manufacturers is hard to deny. They have massive inroads with traditional electronics retailers like Best Buy and Amazon, their own online store, and a good relationship …
Context & Ripple Effects
HP unveiled the TouchPad at its February announcement, and by March PreCentral reported a June release window with pricing starting at $499. Today's news fills in two missing pieces of the launch plan: the confirmed 32GB price of $599, and a distribution channel that reaches well beyond the tech-buying audience.
Wal-Mart's commitment matters because the article's framing already credits HP with strong inroads at Best Buy, Amazon, and its own store — adding the largest US mass-market retailer puts webOS hardware on shelves where casual buyers, not early adopters, shop. It is a scale play: HP is trying to match Apple-style retail ubiquity before the tablet market settles.
First-order effects
- HP enters the June launch with confirmed two-tier pricing ($499 base, $599 for 32GB) and shelf presence at Best Buy, Amazon, its own store, and now Wal-Mart — the broadest physical footprint among non-Apple tablet makers named here.
- Wal-Mart gains a marquee tablet exclusive-ish placement at launch, using HP's hardware to anchor its electronics section against rivals' offerings.
Second-order effects
- Amazon sits on both sides of this deal: it stocks the TouchPad while its own $114 Kindle with Special Offers is already the bestselling Kindle variant and its ebook sales have passed print — so every TouchPad sold there competes against a far cheaper device Amazon profits from directly.
- Competing tablet makers without mass-retail relationships face pressure to buy equivalent shelf space or discount harder, shifting bargaining power toward big-box buyers as the category crowds.
Third-order effects
- If distribution breadth becomes the deciding factor in which tablets survive their first year, 2011's tablet market splits into ecosystem winners sold everywhere versus also-rans dependent on carrier subsidies and niche channels — a structure that rewards HP's channel assets only if webOS content keeps pace.
- The rumored HP music cloud service for the TouchPad, still unconfirmed, points to where the margin lives: services layered on top of hardware distributed at scale, not the devices themselves.
The trend: The 2011 tablet race is being decided less by spec sheets than by who can put hardware in front of mainstream shoppers — HP is betting webOS can win on retail reach what it lacks in installed base.