Slate 2: HP tries tablets again with Windows, Swype, and a stylus for $699
If you had asked us six months ago which tablet HP would still be making come November — the TouchPad or the Slate — the obvious answer would have been the TouchPad. But just as HP's exiting the webOS hardware business …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Slate has been HP's longest-lived tablet bet: an Android-powered Slate surfaced back in January 2010 before webOS took over the roadmap, and the Windows Slate 500 finally shipped at $799 in October 2010. Now the picture has inverted — HP confirmed it is exiting webOS hardware, the $99 TouchPad fire-sale stock is gone with no further shipments, and the October strategic review ended with HP keeping its Personal Systems Group.
Against that backdrop, the $699 Slate 2 is less a new product than a placeholder: HP deflected questions about webOS's future for at least another month, and reporting since June has pointed to Windows 8 tablets as HP's likely next move. The Slate 2 keeps a Windows tablet in the channel until that arrives.
First-order effects
- Business buyers get a pen-and-Swype Windows slate $100 below the Slate 500's launch price, aimed squarely at the niche the TouchPad never served.
- With the TouchPad discontinued, HP's consumer tablet shelf is now empty — every tablet dollar HP chases runs through Windows.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft gains a committed OEM holding the enterprise-pen-slate position through the gap before Windows 8 hardware, keeping the Windows tablet story alive inside corporate accounts.
- Rivals selling stylus-equipped business slates face a cheaper incumbent price point just as HP's PC-retention decision removes the uncertainty that froze enterprise purchasing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, PC makers abandon proprietary mobile OS experiments and consolidate on Windows for tablets, ceding the consumer market to other ecosystems and competing only where the stylus and legacy apps matter.
- The surviving tablet lines become bridge products whose pricing tracks the wait for the next OS generation rather than component costs — a structural shift in how PC vendors sequence hardware against OS cycles.
The trend: PC vendors are retreating from proprietary tablet OSes toward Windows-based business slates, using interim hardware to hold enterprise accounts until the next OS cycle lands.